East Cathay

2009-04-07T02:23:00.010+08:00

Blending in with authoritarianism

Biff: I've long tossed around the idea of writing a novel set in the midst of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Coming across the following section in Jan Tomasz Gross's War Through Children's Eyes reminded me of a circumstance I would need to represent cleverly, evocatively, and in considerable detail: the comprehensive change in the local zeitgeist once the invaders settled in and the caste system (stalwart patriots vs. suspect locals) took hold. I was thinking of the change in terms of television, traffic, utilities, and so forth. Of course there would also be politically motivated disappearances, the overt rounding up of political prisoners, the general cowing of the public through posters, abusive public officials, bruited warnings on TV, but I didn't think ahead far enough to recognize the pervasive changes in behavioral norms which would occur in the public sphere and at home, even within the security of the private.

After 50 years of Japanese occupation, the Taiwanese had become highly civilized and modern. You can see this in the period architecture, and I'm not referring just to structures erected by banks and so forth, but also walls and farm houses. During the Japanese era, quality counted. After the KMT arrived, quality became either unbecoming or, more probably, dangerous and was thus replaced by the rag bag, the jerryrigged, and the slapdash. Crap was less likely to attract predatory officials or the newly imported species of burglar.

Clearly, there was a drastic decline in professional standards, and I remember wondering ages ago if this reflected a decline in personal standards too. When I arrived here 20 odd years ago, people swarmed buses, lied like rugs to the inquisitive unfamiliar, were remarkably callous to strangers involved in accidents, and otherwise acted in a brutish manner in urban public places. Public passivity was a facade hiding intense suspicion. Questions prompted wild answers, people would say anything, however irresponsible, to help. To help get rid of you. Nobody knew anything and two blocks away from everyone's home began a forbidden zone, beyond the pale and not to be risked.

And so stores selling the same things concentrated in queer zones, ghettos as it were, because vendors couldn't attract enough customers out in suburbia. Nobody knew what existed around the corner from where they lived. Too risky. So no bright shopping centers, only endless dim warrens. People warned me not to look out car windows in Taoyuan. Those locals were dangerous.

Naturally things have improved vastly the past couple of decades, though the urban peasant complex survives in many respects, in the fashions of the aged for example.

Edward Said, in Orientialism, quotes an Englishman in Egypt decrying various low practices of the locals: laziness, mendacity, unreliability and so forth. And yet I recognized practically every pejorative description from my own experience while Taiwan was still under martial law. Rather than lazily accuse foreigners of being Eurocentric, these negative traits could be better explained by trying to imagine life under martial law, i.e. without the rule of law, without the immunity a foreigner such as myself had by virtue of his passport. Connections were everything at that time, and bribes were de rigeur for everything from processing a government license to making sure one's doctor didn't saw off the wrong limb in the hospital. Sticking out in any manner was likely to attract the troublesome attention of everyone from jealous cops to observant pick pockets. Telling the truth to strangers was asking for trouble for sooner or later for one was bound to say something offensive to someone with power or connections to power.

Just as the Polish learned to dumb down everything from their apparel to their behavior in public in order not to attract unwanted attention from their Russian overlords, so the Taiwanese made a point of not attracting unwanted attention from the KMT and its local lieutenants.

Here's what happened in Poland in 1939 when the USSR occupied the eastern half, with many of the parallels with the Taiwan of yesteryear rather striking (the very public filth, the overpowering (presumably new) odors, for example):

The threat of arrest and deportation or the necessity to hide one's political past, or the necessity to hide one's political past complicated many people's lives. Both the immediate and all pervasive realization that a new society had already been installed came from the new look of houses and streets and the people in them; from the new songs, music, and propaganda broadcast full blast over speakers mounted in the streets; from unfamiliar odors, like that of the tar with which the footwear of Soviet soldiers was impregnated.

The visual change was the most striking. "Within a week our town was completely changed: dirty all-around, no one caring to keep it clean, heaps of refuse thrown away by the Army disintegrating in the streets. Sidewalks, trees, lawns all destroyed by trucks and tractors." (HI, PGC, Wlodzimierz Wolynski; 39; see also Doc. no. 77) There had been no war in the area, but the brief military operations caused relatively little disruption to life and property. The new look was more a result of the occupation of the war itself, and promptly passed, as if by contagion, from things to people. The population suddenly became acutely aware that external appearance was indicative of social origin. Dressing in certain ways or carrying certain objects increased the probability of being stopped in the street by militiamen and invited snide comments from supporters of the new order, as well as curiosity from Soviet soldiers. It took only a few days for the population in the streets to change its look and undergo a rapid process of upward, external proletarianization. Soon everyone looked more or less like a worker going to or from work. No one wore extravagant colors or fancy clothes; ties rapidly disappeared from men's wardrobes; and scarves replaced hats on women's heads. People instinctively started to care less about external appearance. They went out, indistinguishable in the large crowd of similar men and women, unkempt, hurried, and colorless. On this subdued proletarianized backdrop, a new reality was systematically imposed. Very symbols of Polish state of cultural tradition were slowly eliminated -- memorial plaques, monuments, Polish Eagles. "Lwow jest juz bez lwow" (Lwow is now with lions) wrote a high school friend to Danuta Polniaszek; the occupiers had removed the stone lions in front of the town hall. Street signs were rapidly changed, the Polish names in Latin characters replaced by Ukrainian inscriptions in Cyrillic. Towns and villages were decorated with portraits of Soviet leaders, which appeared everywhere in all sizes, the biggest ones perhaps 6 x 8 m, on office buildings occupied by the new administration. Banners with inscriptions in posters were hung in public places, some ridiculing the former Polish government, some showing despicable silhouettes of Polish officers or, for contrast, advertising the beauty and happiness of the lives of Soviet citizens... On Hetman's Embankments in Lwow enormous red billboards with excerpts from the Soviet constitution written in gold were erected... Red stars popped up here and there, replacing old crosses, Eagles, and sometimes, the traditional rooster shaped windvanes. The physiognomies of Soviet leaders invaded the interiors of buildings as well; in view of the familiar faces of Polish politicians, holy pictures, or small wooden crosses, the appeared on the walls of restaurants, offices, and classrooms...

People in the streets changed not only their appearance, but also their behavior. For one thing, the pace of street life changed. Rather than strolling leisurely or aimlessly, people pretended to walk quickly toward a specific destination. They avoided meeting each other in the street and engaging in conversation. "On October 21, I was walking down Zyblikiewicz Street with Mrs. Wanda S. we were talking about some family matters. Suddenly two men separated us brutally and proceeded to question us about the subject of our conversation. Since our answers were identical, we were released. But I know of people who were arrested in this matter." ...It was safest to walk alone, briskly.

There was also less courtesy, chivalry, and politeness in crowded tramways or public places, and women received less of the recognition and respect traditionally granted them. This was partly due to the overcrowding and shortages and fatigue and irritation typical of situations of prolonged stress. But to a large extent it was another consequence of the law of mimicry, for the occupiers were, most conspicuously, lacking in social graces: "Their conduct was one of the main reasons why we looked upon them as if they were of a different mentality, as if they belonged to a different spiritual formation." To understand the experience of the Bolshevik occupation, one would have to know "how they moved, how they walked, how they sat, how they waved their hands."

2009-04-05T23:08:00.018+08:00

History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes - Mark Twain

Biff: There were several comic aspects to the barbarous stage of occupation of Taiwan by KMT forces from 1945 onward. One was the notion instilled into common soldiers by their captains and political officers that Taiwan was to be liberated from the vicious grasp of the amoral Japanese while the Taiwanese themselves were a disreputable crew of Benedict Arnolds. Either way, the theory ran that the Taiwanese had been deprived of the patriotic milk of human kindness oozing from the withered teats of the civil-war exhausted motherland and were not only unaware but, much worse, ungrateful. They not only suffered under the iron grip of the Devil Dwarves but had been brainwashed into credulously believing they were superior to their native Chinese brothers and sisters, who, though equal, were more equal than they, when all was said and done, given their superior provenence and hence enhanced authenticity.

Theory, all theory usually, hits the road for the first time with a crash. When the KMT soldiers arrived, they found themselves in a wealthy land which had prospered under Japanese oppression. In fact the land was so oppressedly wealthy and prosperous, and the common soldiers from China rendered so poor and deprived care of their patriotic paymasters, that quite a few liberators took to stealing with abandon from the ostensibly oppressed.

Theft by itself is unremarkable. But it was sometimes done with style. KMT soldiers stole bicycles for example. Unable to peddle them away because they couldn't ride them competently, they gave the game away by carrying them on their shoulders. Too obvious, like a forlorn fashionista carrying her pocket pooch (the more successful ones collar a man-serf, a lap-dog if you will, to carry their toy coolies, er, collies). Excuses that the bike belonged to the porter underneath the purloined contraption, i.e. bike rides man, rather than the other way around, were to no avail.

And then there was the common soldiery witnessing the holy prodigy of household running water, streams of which emerged from an appliance called a tap, planted in many a Taiwanese wall. Inspired to purchase one of these miracle gadgets at a local hardware store, the tap was screwed or otherwise forced into the wall of one's own dwelling on the theory, assisted by a belief in the miracles of Western science, that turning said spigot would generate running water. Failure to comply with expectations clearly indicated that said tap was defective. Those tricky Taiwanese turncoats! This in turn led to heated arguments with hardware store owners and accusations of retailing faulty goods to take advantage of innocent patriots, patriotic emancipators that is, who having converted weapons to plowshares, were now helpless in the face of emancipation of their hard-earned scrip.

In Poland, the USSR troops, same same. History rhymes. Check out the below.

The following excerpted from books.google (War Through Children's Eyes) by Jan Tomasz Gross.

...The first visual contact between the Soviets and the population of eastern Poland revealed something that neither side anticipated. The red Army was, of course, an army, but there was something odd about its makeup. True, its tanks rolled proudly along streets and country roads, but then horseman and horse-drawn supply carts came. Most of the animals appeared to be on their last legs. Soldiers poured in endlessly -- there were thousands of them -- but some had saddles and some did not; some had shoes, but others only cloth wrapped around their feet; some wore long coats, other short ones; some had belts, while others had only strings attached to their rifles (Docs. no. 17, 9, 43, 110). And there was a strange look on their faces -- a mixture of suspicion, incredulity, and joy. For they literally could not believe their eyes when they saw those images, unbelievable riches. Take, for example, the peasant horses and cattle, all so well fed and well kept. Many a red Army soldier jumped on the grazing horse and sped away. Many swapped their nags for the healthy and strong horse of a helpless peasant. Then, too, there was food, in dazzling amounts and varieties: orchards bearing fruit which they freely helped themselves, food offered in peasant huts, including delicacies rarely seen in their kolkhozes or hometowns -- butter, sour cream, meat, sausage, eggs, cheese. But perhaps the greatest revelation came when they reached the towns with their material objects and commodities: shoes, clothes, fabrics, and industrial products of all sorts -- watches, for example, were great wonder. And all this can be seen in the shops; it could be touched, bought, appropriated.

It was a very confusing experience for Red Army soldiers who knew they had come to liberate the oppressed blood brothers from the masters yoke. For they also knew that the masters, by definition, were a small minority and that everyone else was suffering deprivation. But where were the masses if everyone lived so well? (this is even more ironical since the eastern half was the poorest part of Poland, which itself was rather poor by contemporary European standards.)

Before being ordered into Poland, red Army personnel had been warned of propaganda tricks that would be pulled on them in this foreign country, and they were taught how to protect themselves and how to behave... There were even standard phrases to memorize such as "U nas vse est'" (we have everything) and "U nas etogo mnogo" (we have plenty of that). But as the soldier saw many commodities for the first time in their lives, they blundered repeatedly and made fools of themselves. Soon the boldest young pranksters in Lwow and other towns were entertaining audiences by engaging soldiers in conversations about Soviet factories that produced oranges, Greta Garbos, and Amsterdams (Doc. no. 77)

2009-04-05T22:03:00.016+08:00

Quoted from books.google (War Through Children's Eyes) by Jan Tomasz Gross.

...Numerous militia units, all over the "liberated" territory, included common criminals in their ranks (Docs. no. 15, 100).

It is not surprising that the Soviets should utilize criminals to subdue the conquered territory and the potentially hostile population since they used criminals in camps throughout Russia as auxiliaries and treated them better and trusted them more than politically suspect people. Common criminals were viewed in the USSR as "class allies" whose cooperation in the effort to stamp out the social' no opasnyj (socially harmful) element, that is class enemies, was most welcome.

The red Army broke open jails along its way -- who else could have been kept there but class enemies of the Polish "masters"? -- a logical deduction since during the first days of the war scores of Ukrainian nationalists and communist sympathizers had been arrested in Poland. Red Army commanders, on their westward march, had no time to ask for character references from everyone ready to assist them in organizing the new order. Front line soldiers and officers of the red Army knew that the old order in the conquered territory had to be inverted, that those on the top and on the bottom of the social scale would trade positions. Naturally, prisoners of the Polish government were more trustworthy than those who had not been in jail; a coachman was a better candidate for town office then a civil servant or politician; a doorman was better fit to run a large enterprise than an engineer; a porter made a perfect railroad station master; and the poorest peasants were promoted over everyone else to village committees....

Biff: Interesting, this logical reductio ad absurdum of populist socialism. That, in the end, if populist socialists gain authoritarian power, society is turned upside down and criminals lord it over the law-abiding, as here in this instance in Poland in 1941, and in China during the Cultural Revolution, when the students were granted lordship over their teachers, occasionally beating them to death, and in Pol Pot's Cambodia where the illiterate were empowered to righteously exterminate the literate. Idealism, beautiful booster of the cocksure, liberates the barbarian within to slay the noble savage without.

But we can also look to more benign examples of the same sort of thing. I wasn't thinking of anything as extreme as the Killing Fields when first plowing those several paragraphs. They simply reminded me of that excellent sendup of Bill Clinton, the film Primary Colors. There's a scene when the narrator is brought to a public event and informed by his comrade-in-arms and campaign-trail f-chick that most of the worthies in attendance are in fact derelicts flushed out of a local soup kitchen. The point is, if one is corralling populist votes, the votes of the underprivileged, i.e. the financially incompetent, one will naturally end up foraging through society's demimonde. One sees this in political party support for illegal immigrants, for example.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an immigrant. And when younger, had half a mind to sample illegal immigration. Besides, populist socialism can work to the benefit of society when the given political party represents the injured interests of immigrant labor, transient labor, and so forth. But populist socialism also mutated into a horror show of absurdity in a previous era, one not so distant, and more importantly did so with a monotony that implies a logical inevitability running the show regardless of the posing ringmaster bawling shibboleths and taking credit.

Much of what human beings do, after all, runs under the radar of consciousness with consequences beyond our immediate awareness. Whether our personal lives, or political ones, we often believe we're controlling or even creating a show when in fact the show is an equation without fair reciprocity, action prompting unequal reaction, ourselves catalysts spurring an unwanted avalanche.

To be less cryptic, an example of such tipping points: cynical lip service paid to catastrophic global warming on the theory that though it's bogus it will improve the environment. Instead, it results in Third World forest being felled to grow corn for ethanol, local farmland turned into ethanol plantations with fallow land reactivated for crops, new land opened up too but not tilled in order to earn carbon credits. The subsequent rise in food prices causes privation and riots in the Third World, while pristine desert land is defaced by thousands of acres of solar panels, and wind farms kill thousands of birds per annum. To paraphrase Mark Twain, a lie gets half way round the world before the truth finishes screwing its pants on.

Again, my point isn't to paint populist socialists as evildoers. There are no evildoers. Just mortals. Ignoramuses. Dumb and dumberer. The deaf leading the blind.

Just my curiosity being peaked by pious individuals committing ideologically driven profanities. Just another drive-by shooting in man-made paradise.

2009-04-05T21:27:00.009+08:00

Cramer Says Recession Over

Looks like Obama has given up somewhat on morality-play economics
(i.e. the pursuit of fairness, social justice, and other hidebound
parochial populist nonsense) and turned (somewhat) to the real thing,
i.e. empiricism and ethics based economics (i.e. that what actually
works and makes the country a better place is ethical, regardless of
how immoral it appears to the shallow and fatuous glib Luddite). Thank
god. After the tedious distraction of medieval Islamofascism, the last
thing we need is another set of morons preoccupied with the pieties of
dark-ages thinking and repeating the antiquated errors of FDR and Wang
Mang (the latter a first century AD Chinese political progressive
(i.e. an anti-science pious economic conservative) who bankrupted the
Han economy with his own morality-play grand-idea based economics (ex:
he replaced the original currency format with a new one of 28
currencies; what a great idea! It's complex and abstruse. A work of
genius! It was like abandoning Copernicus for Ptolemy to explain the
solar system and calling one's detractors simpletons and
conservative-minded, when of course Ptolemy predates Copernicus and
Copernicus' system both worked and obeyed Occam's Razor, a rule of
thumb that possibly finds its greatest application in economics &
finance (two entirely different fields by the way; economics is to
finance as anthropology is to sociology). Much of economic
progressivism in fact predates capitalism by a couple of thousand
years and is in fact an attempt to complicate a simple system which
has been working better than any other for a thousand years now since
its inception in Europe care of the Catholic Church or in China during
the Sung Dynasty.

A simple thought experiment: were income gaps bigger or smaller prior
to capitalism? Smaller of course. The farther we move into the future,
the greater the gap becomes. Ergo the "progressive" demand for an end
to high executive salaries inter alia is not progressive but
conservative. Its a demand to return to the good old days when income
disparity was less. It's a demand made by a pack of economically
illiterate good ole' boys posing as futurists.

This sort of progressivism appears at times in all political parties
and of course always will.

Anyway, I found the following video at The Huffington Post whose
masthead might as well read: All the Ad hominems Fit to Print. Ignore
the bellicose comments below the article at the url below, as
opposition (principled or otherwise) to Dem talking points de jour is
typically interpreted by HP readers as treachery or the folly of the
useful idiot: failure to carry water renders one objectively an enemy
of the state-to-be. (And I'm fully familiar with the John
Stewart/Cramer circus)

I have no idea if Cramer is right about the economy, but if he's right
about Obama (who appears in three short clips) we can all breathe
easier. Somebody seems to have schooled him in Econ 101.

Cramer Huffing and Puffing over at Huff Post is here:

The past month's performance of the DOW is here:

2008-10-06T14:13:00.002+08:00

The Mainland Chinese: "Jews of the East" destined to be the new global Jews?

(From an outgoing email:) ...And of course, there's a promising future too in the hating of Jews.
Envy of one's betters is a meme that never dies, only the excuses
masking it change. Witness the support of domestic and international
under-dogs (local minorities and failed states) who proudly perpetuate
ideologies of failure, often religious taboos against smart money
management. Failure is acceptable if it enables them to stick to their
ideals. The mantra "nothing succeeds like success" is crass. Far more
sublime, poignant, and wallowing in tragic history is the more poetic
crie de couer, "nothing succeeds like failure".

The original Jews of the East, the former sick men of Asia, the
continental Chinese, by and large despise another tribe of Chinese,
the Hakka, the Jews of China, a more successful money-sensible
minority which also sensibly avoided the traditional taboo on women
with unbound feet. If you'll recall, Hakka culture produced such
go-go evil-doers as Sun Yat-sen, Lee Kuan-yao and Lee Teng-hui.

New Jews are being invented all the time such as the Lebanese of West
Africa who enjoy a safety net not available to the serially pogromed
and massacred traditional Jews of the region, the Nigerian Igbo.
Fiji's Gujarati Indians, the Jews of India who used to run a
prosperous slave trade in Africans, have become the new Jews of their
region of the Pacific and gloomily await the day they'll be pushed
back into the ocean by the Melanesians. During the apartheid era,
South Africa's Jews were the whites, who opened the country club door
other international Jews via welcoming the Japanese and so forth into
official membership as whites, i.e. domestic Jews.

The Aztecs were the money-smart Jews of Mexico, the highest stratum of
their imperialistic society being traders. White Europeans were the
global Jews for the duration of the European stage of imperialism and
the Cold War. Since then, the emerging global Jew has been the
Americano (despised by the Old World's fallen imperial Jews, i.e.
social-democratic Europeans. We shall see how the Americano as Jew
meme goes, given that the US will not be overtaken by China and India
vis-a-vis military might in the next several decades (unless I'm
mistaken, China still can't R&D a fighter jet fuselage that doesn't
pull turns like a 70's Cadillac, a vehicle known in Florida as a "Jew
Canoe"). The election of Obama probably won't change anything as he
appears to be a Jack Kennedy democrat. Given his stance on
aggressively hunting Al Qaeda into Pakistan, he's out to prove a Dem
can kick international butt just as badly as a Republican.

The current crop of government-empowered mainland Chinese
international businessmen, unlike their Western analogue, don't
misapply family morals to the anonymous and unregulated business of
international commerce in the Third World. I expect them to be
increasingly vilified by pious paranoiacs of the left and right as
masterminds of a new world order they yet conspicuously fail to
control. See the recent anti-Chinese riots in the Solomon Islands,
decades of official pogroms against the Chinese in Indonesia, etc. for
which the Chinese and Taiwanese governments have been powerless to
prevent in the past (or near future I predict). Nevertheless, like the
non sequitur that George W. Bush was the ultimate doofus and yet also
the ultimate slick political operator, the non sequitur of greedy
Chinese businessmen who yet positively propel Africa's economic
development (unlike the conspicuous failure of international aid) will
drive the fanatics wild. After all, all too many fanatics are
unashamed of conspicuous failure if they can claim they stuck to their
ideals. What really enrages them is being shown up by amoral success.
Now that's profane!

2008-10-06T13:57:00.007+08:00

Utopian Devolution

Don't know if you've been paying any attention to ACORN, one of the apparent instigators of the subprime meltdown and also famous for members being found guilty of organized vote fraud in several states. One of the interesting commonalities to me is the policing of corporations by utopians such as Ralph Nader and ACORN which fight for social justice but refuse even the minimum wage to their own employees and unlawfully prevent their own employees from unionizing. Then again the history of utopian organizations reveals a consistent devolution from industrial society down to impoverishment, rule by fiat, sexism, and other resurrections of pre-industrial society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Rathke

July 9th,2008 The New York Times reported[1] that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN's founder Wade Rathke, was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from the group and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000. ACORN executives, including Rathke, did not inform the whole board, nor law enforcement, but signed an enforceable restitution agreement with the Rathke family to repay the amount of the embezzlement. Wade Rathke stated to the Times that "the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a 'weapon' into the hands of [...] conservatives who object to [ACORN]'s often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers." A whistleblower revealed the embezzlement in 2001; the Rathke brothers both departed ACORN in 2008.[1] [2]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/09embezzle.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000, Acorn officials said, but a small group of executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group’s board members and not to alert law enforcement.

Dale Rathke remained on Acorn’s payroll until a month ago, when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him.

Biff: So, seven long years after being found embezzling from the organization, Dale Rathke was still an employee on the ACORN payrool. His restitution settlement? Pay back US$30,000 a year. How much was ACORN paying him per annum? $US38,000. Do the math. He owes US$948, 607. No doubt his play was to divert his ACORN salary to paying back the "loan" for him painlessly. At 30k per year, it would take 32 years to pay back the "loan" during which time, he'd profit from any and all investments, annuities, and so forth which acrrue from his cool million. Not a bad plan eh? At his age, Dale would probably have died prior to paying off all the money.

http://townhall.com/columnists/CarlHorowitz/2008/08/09/acorn_cracks_wide_open?page=2

...In addition to vote fraud, ACORN has displayed a penchant for treating its workers poorly, despite the group’s close ties to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Locals 100 and 880 (Rathke is chief organizer for Local 100, representing several thousand workers in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas). It’s more than a little ironic that ACORN for nearly 15 years has been leading heavily union-backed campaigns to force private- as well as public-sector employers in cities and counties across the nation to pay workers a “living” wage, while severely underpaying and otherwise exploiting its own community foot soldiers. Indeed, ACORN for years had blocked attempts by employees to unionize until the National Labor Relations Board told them otherwise. In March 2003, the nonprofit group lost its final appeal of an NLRB ruling holding that ACORN had violated its employees’ rights.

ACORN doesn’t even like paying the minimum wage, let alone a “living” one set several dollars an hour higher. In 1995, ACORN’s California chapter went to court seeking an exemption from having to pay its workers the state minimum, at the time $4.25 an hour. The group lost. In its unsuccessful appeal, ACORN argued that being forced to pay its workers the minimum wage would violate its First Amendment rights. The presiding judge termed the argument “absurd.” Welcome to the real world of employment.

2006-08-23T02:06:00.000+08:00

If one opposes the War on Drugs - what should perhaps more properly be called Narcotics Prohibition - what to make of the infamous Opium War of 19th-century China?

Narcotics had been marketed in the United States for a least a couple of hundred years before the Harrison act of 1914 began the government's busy-body dog-legging of the consumer drug traffic. Cigarettes were banned in some states because they encouraged debauchery and made men effeminate. Then alcohol was proscribed from 1920 to 1933 with the result that public drunkeness increased, not decreased. This was because drug dealers of the day - i.e. alcohol pushers - correctly reckoned that it was not in their best economic interest to risk prison time for the low profit margins incurred when selling low alcohol content beverages. Thus hard liquor quickly became the only form of hooch on tap. One simply couldn't buy beer or wine coolers. With only rotgut available, drunkeness quickly became almost de rigeur with drinkers. In fact, the two-fisted hard drinking culture (ex: the double martini lunch) which only began to die out in the late 1970s was sandbagged onto us by Prohibition. The present enlightened preference for drinking beer and wine coolers is actually a reversion to alcohol consumption in urban America prior to alcohol prohibition. As with so many alleged modernizations (women's lib, gay rights, etc), it's not that contemporary drinkers have heroically overcome the past to emerge more progressive and civilized, but that we've reverted to the earlier era of our great-grandfathers, to revive a more traditional and more civilized culture of drinking. To stride progressively into the future, we've taken a pleasant header into the past.

-
Opium has been available in China since at least the fourth century A.D. There had been no moral collapse as result of opium's availability for 15 centuries. But then, in the late 18th century opium prohibition began to appear care of busy-body academics and emperors. This produced the corruption that appears whenever government gets into the monopoly business and bans everyone else but itself from selling something. Furthermore, paleface missionaries got into the bidness of peddling the opium scare as a way of prompting donations back in the home countries. When saving heathens from themselves was an insufficient motivator for looting wallets of spare change (this was an era when self-reliance was still popular), the invention of an allegedly real-life demonology came in very handy vis-à-vis the narcotics peddler. If Demon Rum couldn't be hawked, then Demon Opium would more than suffice.

-
Here's a quote from an 1841 account of the opium business in China: Among the thousands who have suffered in person and property for being either really or constructively concerned in selling or using opium, three or four only of the government officers are said to have been called to account for their conduct; though the manner in which they have acted in the matter is summed up in the following story, which was often cited to me by an inhabitant of more than 40 years in China. The magistrates in a town upon the coast beheaded 13 opium smugglers one morning; and before three o'clock the same day they sent to the foreigners, saying, we are ready to admit opium again upon the terms heretofore observed between us. - they had washed their hands in blood, and were now prepared to incur a new debt of guilt, to be liquidated in due time after the same manner.

-
The more things change, the more they remain the same, yes? And here's a quote I'm particularly fond of: In China, the spendthrift, the man of lewd habits, the drunkard, and a large assortment of bad characters, slide into the opium smoker; hence the drug seems to be chargeable with all the vices of the country. Opium, doubtless, has her victims in persons who, but for her fascinating lures, might have escaped their ruin; but in the great majority of instances she only adds one stain more to a character already polluted.
-

If interested in this book, go here for more at Googlebooks: http://tinyurl.com/rc363

There's an interesting youtube vid here as well: Cops Against the Drug War

2006-05-22T23:03:00.000+08:00

Won't post anything for a few days because of the mass of writing I have to complete for the literary luncheon this weekend. Biff...

2006-05-20T19:17:00.000+08:00

China’s Union Push Leaves Wal-Mart With Hard Choice: ACFTU's goal is to increase the number of foreign companies with unionized work forces. Currently, only about 30% of foreign companies in China have trade unions. Trade groups are aiming for 60% by the end of this year and 80% by 2007. Biff- Sure, return to socialism, which has worked so well before... There goes the economy.

-- Wal-Mart has a history in both the U.S. and abroad of resisting the involvement of any third-parties with its work force. In 2000, a group of butchers in a Texas Wal-Mart supercenter voted to unionize. Shortly thereafter, Wal-Mart announced it was switching to prepackaged beef and reassigned the store's butchers. In Canada, the United Food and Commercial Workers organized a Jonquiere, Quebec, Wal-Mart in 2004. The retailer shuttered the store last year, claiming it was losing money and that union demands would prevent it from becoming profitable. Biff- Outstanding. I ain't no fan of unions.

2006-05-19T11:51:00.000+08:00

The Mysterious "Internet Police" Surfaces: "The Internet police cartoon figures are present at Shenzhen News Net, Shenzhen Hotline, QQ and more than 100 major forums in Shenzhen," said worker Wang Ke to this reporter. "They are on duty twenty-four hours a day, and they guarantee that they will respond to reports or requests from netizens."
"The main purpose is to warn people and to deter irrational behavior and harmful information on the Internet," explained Xu Qian. "Jingjing" and "Chacha" have cute images, they have police officer status, they are friendly and they are easy to accept."
Xu Qian and Wang Ke are Internet police officers at the Internet Security Supervisory Department of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau. In the past, they were just "lurking" in the dark at the forums and watching the Internet netizens bustle around. The netizens had not even been aware that they existed.
Presently, more than 100 Internet police officers have formed a large Internet force of "virtual police" and they have stepped out into the open. On the Internet, they now have the two cute image spokespersons, "Jingjing" and "Chacha."
"The keyboard and the mouse are our weapons." The thin Xu Qian looked more like a shy university student than the traditional stern and stout police officer. His office is set up like a commercial company office: central air conditioning, three rows of twelve cubicles separated by blue-and-white boards and everybody watching their computer screen quietly. On the desk, there are no mountains of case files. The setting is simple: one 17" LCD monitor, one 16-line green notebook and one telephone.

Shaolin today has been reborn as a well-oiled corporation, with holding monks with master of business administration (MBA) degrees sorting out temple management issues on cellular phones, presided over by an abbot the local media call the "CEO of Shaolin".

..."In a globalized world we need our monks to be able to communicate in different languages," says Shi. He adds that about half of the temple's 200 monks speak a foreign language. English, Korean and Japanese are the most popular, and a few have even learned Farsi. Currently more than 10 monks are taking degrees abroad. The abbot's latest commercial venture is the production of an international, televised martial-arts contest, the winner of which will star in a series of movies the temple is investing in.

Each day, tens of thousands of communist Chinese peasants stream into Macau, the Las Vegas of Asia, to bet their entire lifesavings in the hope of a better future.

...Her route takes her through streets lined with jewelers and pawn shops, where winners show off and losers go begging, where bleach-blonde Ukrainian women saunter from one pimp to the next and young girls from all over China take their new breasts, recently enlarged for 4,500 yuan (€450) a piece, for a walk.

...Despite her devastating losses, she still believes Macau is the better China and that it offers a better life. She's certain she'll return to Macau as soon as possible. And that the next time she'll make her fortune. She eats a small bowl of noodles in a Taiwanese soup restaurant underneath the girders of the city's elevated highway, where waitresses standing at the tables yell out their orders to the kitchen, as loudly as if they were calling the police. She is here to say goodbye to Wei Quihua, a short, good-humored woman who became her friend within a few days. Wei bet and lost 100,000 yuan (almost €10,000) -- the entire capital and earnings of her lamp shop back home in Jiangxi Province.

...Nanchang's beautiful people have no idea who Zhou Enlai was. They too have only heard about Mao in passing. To them, "communism" and "party" are nothing but words, and phrases like "socialist market economy" are concepts they find difficult to comprehend as they sit in the C Straits Café, drinking latte macchiatos and gazing down at the city's lake, where the elderly still perform their Qi Gong gymnastics in formation every morning, just as they've always done.

Saving Seoul: Pollution is ruining the quality of life in much of urban Asia. But Seoul's transformation into a greener city proves the tide can still be turned.

... Seoul—a city long synonymous with unchecked urban development, where Parks were more commonly found in the phone book than on the streets—is growing green. Besides the restored Cheonggyecheon, which opened last October, the city has helped plant some 3.3 million trees since 1998 and recently developed Seoul Forest, a $224 million patch of urban woodland comparable to London's Hyde Park. A cutting-edge, clean-running transit system is slowly weaning Seoulites off their auto addiction.

...Rising incomes play a part in the priority shift, but Kim Won Bae, a director at the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), a Seoul-based think tank, traces the change back to disasters like the collapse of the shoddily constructed Sampoong department store in 1995, which killed 501 people, and the economic crisis of 1997. "Those events made a lot of people think again about what economic growth was all about," he says.

...Won Bae of KRIHS tells the story of visiting Shanghai and meeting a Chinese urban planner who had a burning question: how many 100-m-high or taller buildings did Seoul have? "I asked her why she asked that," he says. "She was still in the age of triumphalism. Seoul was once in that period as well, but we have passed it."

Iran used stocks of high-quality uranium gas from China in order to hasten a breakthrough in enrichment for a programme the West fears could be hiding nuclear weapons work, diplomats told AFP. "The Iranians have sought to accomplish a technological achievement for political purposes and chose the Chinese feedstock gas because of its quality, which ensures a better (uranium) enrichment process," said a diplomat with access to intelligence sources.

2006-05-18T13:42:00.000+08:00

The only Asian entry for the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival is likely to be pulled from the competition before its first screening today after permission for it to be shown was refused by China's powerful censors. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said Summer Palace failed to meet technical standards - the picture was "too fuzzy" and the sound quality poor.

The publicity material for the film on the festival website describes it as opening against a "volatile Chinese backdrop of political unrest" and adds that the lovers' relationship "becomes one of dangerous games, as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom". It is the director Lou Ye's second brush with the censors. In 2000 he was banned from filming for two years after showing his most famous work, Suzhou River, at overseas festivals without permission.

我的學長胡錦濤: 編者按：六四後流亡海外的原北京四通總裁萬潤南與中共總書記胡錦濤曾在清華大學有學友關係。本文回憶二人同學相知後來分道揚鑣的往事，是一份珍貴的史料。

Editor's Note: The author was personally acquainted with Hu Jintao, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, when both were students at Beijing 's Tsinghua University . Mr. Wan later became president of Beijing-based Stone Corp. before fleeing into exile after the “June 4 th” incident of 1989. Here he writes of his friendship with Hu during their college years before each eventually went his own way. This is a valuable historical piece for the study of the fourth generation of Chinese communist leaders.

...In her 300 years of history, Yale has produced many members of the elite, among them five presidents of the United States . But in 20 years, Tsinghua produced four members of the current Standing Committee of the Politburo, including Hu Jintao. From the standpoint of timing, Tsinghua exhibits a better efficiency.
How did president Jiang Nanxiang achieve this? Mainly by using a system of “political counselors” to train student cadres. At the time I was there, the student cultural and arts group had four counselors: Yin Fusheng, Hu Jintao, Li Guiqiu and Ren Lihan. Among them, Yin and Li were cold and remote, and Hu and Ren more personable. But they all had something in common: obedience and efficiency. Their nicknames were indicative of their roles and characters: Three were given a nickname based on their names: Lao Yin (meaning Old Yin), Li Gui, and Xiao Han (meaning Little Han). Only Hu Jintao was called “Commander.” Why was he addressed this way? I once asked Lao Yin. He said he had no idea. But it now seems this nickname was accurate. Hu rose from “Commander” of the student cultural and arts group to “Commander” of the Youth League of the communist party, then to Commander of Guizhou Province and the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and now of the whole country.

關於文革的一個建議: 文革把中國蹂躪到如此黑暗、如此野蠻、如此悲慘的田地，可謂空前而絕後，不僅我們憤慨不已，列祖列宗也為之蒙羞！今日中國之種種醜行惡狀，難道沒有文革遺風的影響所致？因此，本刊以微薄的力量，二十年來盡匹夫之責，從來沒有在文革評論和批毛方面退後一步，對於那些保毛崇毛言論，總是嗤之以鼻。我們也深知面對的是一個巨大工程，尚須以愚公移山之志，不棄一鋤一鎬之力。美國吳弘達先生，鑒於俄羅斯有「古拉格」 Gulag ，猶太人有「大屠殺」 Holocaust 之例，以紀國恥，以醒後人，乃費十年辛勞，終將「勞改」 Laogai 一詞列入牛津大辭典，讓世界知道中國的悲劇。我們不妨提議，將「文革」 Wenge 一詞循例辦理，希望大家以後再不用「文化大革命」「文化革命」這樣官方的辭令，而直稱「文革」可也。

English discourse has for some time adopted the Russian term “Gulag” and the concept of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jewish people, as a means of reminding current and future generations of national disgrace. For the same purpose, Mr. Harry Wu of the United States spent 10 years before finally persuading the editor of the Oxford Dictionary to incorporate the word “Laogai,” the Chinese phonetic spelling for “reform through labor,” into the English language so as to make the world aware of China 's tragedy. Likewise, this magazine suggests that we do the same for the word “Wenge,” the Chinese pinyin for “Cultural Revolution.” We hope that from now on no one uses the grand official terms of “Cultural Revolution” or “Great Cultural Revolution,” but simply “Wenge.”

Burma Karen families 'on the run': Thousands of families are reported to be on the run in the hills of eastern Burma because of a government offensive against ethnic Karen rebels.

...Slipping across the Burmese border by boat, then hiking through the jungle to a remote valley, we met 700 weary civilians who are now in hiding. The Khu family had arrived a day earlier trekking for a month from their village. The father, Sawmaw, said Burmese government troops had burned every house and killed some of his neighbours.

Bank of China, the country's second largest lender, has announced the launch of a $9.8bn (£5.2bn) share flotation on the Hong Kong market. Set to be the world's biggest initial share offering since 2000, it comes as China continues to open up its banking sector to foreign competition. A consortium of international banks led by Royal Bank of Scotland spent $3bn on a 10% stake in Bank of China last year.

...But some analysts have warned off investors, pointing out the bank's problems with bad loans, fraud investigations and antiquated computer systems.

2006-05-17T17:25:00.000+08:00

U.S. Aims to Improve Military Ties With China: "They really went out of their way to accommodate nearly everything I wanted to do," he said. The goal, he added, is to push for more contacts, "to see more things and different things, and to be more open and transparent in military matters." Seeking to accelerate the movement, Fallon said, he invited senior Chinese officers to observe U.S.-led joint military exercises next summer near the Pacific island of Guam, promising them the opportunity to review U.S. bases and board U.S. warships during air-sea drills. Implicit in the invitation, he added, was the idea that, if the Chinese attend, they would reciprocate by inviting U.S. officers to observe future Chinese exercises "in a manner we would like to make a standard for both countries."

China's Crackdown On Foreign Law Firms -- The Heat We Get/The Heat We Generate: Many legal documents, such as opinions on how Chinese law applies to a transaction, can only be rendered by a Chinese attorney, which foreign law firms are prohibited from employing. Potentially, all transactions that have taken place to date, including contracts, financing agreements and IPOs, that have used documents drafted by foreign law firms as their legal basis could be declared null and void by the government on the grounds that the firms lacked the authorization to issue such documents, said Dickinson.

...However, I agree with Dan [Harris of the China Law Blog] that it's not all that remarkable. China is no more insular, territorial and medieval toward "foreign" business lawyers than the 50 states are toward China lawyers. Moreover, several American states in particular are arguably more backward and restrictive than China. For example, California, one of four jurisdictions where I am licensed, is supposedly a progressive state with a huge and vibrant economy. But it still has a non-reciprocity bar admission policy with respect to licensing out-of-state lawyers--as if it refuses to recognize that business is done across both state and international borders. Massachusetts' Alan Dershowitz would have to take the 2-day "lawyers" California bar exam--a world-class waste of time and money--along side hundreds of 25-year-olds named Justin, Brandon and Brittany to argue more than one appellate case a year here. So would Florida's Roy Black and New York's David Boies in the trial courts. So China and California (and other non-reciprocity states) are about even on the anti-business and general madness meters.

New charges expected in defense data theft ring: Chi, Tai and Rebecca Mak have pleaded not guilty to the original charges in the case. "We presented evidence throughout this case that undermines the government's conclusion that these individuals were involved in espionage," Ronald Kaye, Chi Mak's attorney, said in an interview. An attorney for Mrs. Chiu, Stanley Greenberg, said he is confident that his client will be found not guilty. An attorney for Tai Mak could not be reached for comment. U.S. officials described Tai Mak, an engineer with Phoenix Television, as an intelligence courier for the Chinese military who was carrying an encrypted computer disk holding defense technology data when he was arrested. Tai Mak also will be charged with aiding and abetting and possession of property to aid a foreign government. He and his wife were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport as they were about to fly to Hong Kong. Tai Mak was carrying an encrypted disk that FBI officials said contained data on a new technology for destroyers known as quiet electric drive. Earlier charges that Chi Mak, Tai Mak and Rebecca Mak failed to register as Chinese government agents will be kept in the new indictment. Chi and Tai Mak were born in Guangzhou, China. The new charges were based on thousands of pages of documents found at the home of Chi Mak, officials said.

North Korean "brides" are prized in China, where there is a shortage of young women thanks to Beijing's one-child policy, Chinese families' preference for sons, and the government's blind eye toward rampant female infanticide. In northeast China, where many ethnic Koreans live, North Korean women are "known to be polite and clean," says Hannah. "Young Chinese women from rural areas marry into the cities," adds Naomi. "It's difficult to find young women in the countryside."
A North Korean in China--even one who is there against her own volition--quickly learns that there is a worse fate than being sold into sexual slavery: being captured by the Chinese authorities and repatriated. It is a crime to leave the North, and Koreans who are sent back end up in prison camps or worse. "I had no choice but to depend on the man" who bought her, Hannah says. But "for the first time in my life, I felt like a sinner, because I had a family in North Korea and I was living with this man."

..."When I was eight months pregnant, I was captured by the Chinese," she says. "Somebody from my neighborhood reported me. . . . [The Chinese] pay people to report North Koreans." Her relatives paid the fine, but seven months later, when her son was still nursing, she was captured again. This time she was sent back to North Korea. Her son was wrenched from her.
She spent the next period of her life in a succession of prison camps. "I went into the Musan Security Center. There if you even spoke a word, they would make you hold out your hands and beat you with a large wooden stick." She did farm work in another camp. It was harvest season. "You start at 4 o'clock in the morning and work until 10 or 11 at night." When the guards moved prisoners from camp to camp, "they would use shoelaces to tie our thumbs together to the thumbs of the person next to us so tightly that our thumbs would swell up."

Next Wave of Camera-Wielding Tourists Is From China: For the first time in history, large numbers of Chinese are leaving their country as tourists, resulting in an unparalleled explosion in Chinese travel. If current projections are met, the global tourism industry will be undergoing a crash course in everything Chinese to accommodate the needs of what promises to be the greatest wave of international travelers ever.
As usual when something goes over big in China, the numbers are staggering. In 1995, only 4.5 million Chinese traveled overseas. By 2005 that figure had increased to 31 million, and if expectations for future growth are met or approached, even that gargantuan growth will be quickly dwarfed. Chinese and international travel industry experts forecast that at least 50 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas annually by 2010, and 100 million by 2020.
In 2004, the last year for which there is complete information, 61.7 million Americans traveled abroad.

...Chinese tourists have been fined heavily in France recently for arriving with counterfeit luxury goods, like fake Louis-Vuitton handbags.
In Shanghai and other cities, travel agencies post people at airports warning Chinese travelers about penalties for importing fakes and imparting advice on etiquette in the West. "Don't pick teeth, touch your belt, pull at your pants or take off your shoes in public," reads one common brochure. "Don't point fingers at people you're talking to, and don't put your hands on others' shoulders."

2006-05-16T12:52:00.000+08:00

Taiwan Plans Big Anti-Appeasement Campaign: Concerned that time could be working against Taiwan, its increasingly isolated, independence-leaning government is preparing a major new propaganda push that will make the case for defending the island against a possible Chinese attack.

...Back to the main story. In a novel twist on the historical argument, we are told Taiwan's propagandists plan to draw a moral comparison with another endangered nation, one that some might be tempted to isolate or sacrifice in an attempt to appease powerful oil producing nations. That country, of course, is Israel--which ironically supplies China with important military technology that could be used against Taiwan. Ignoring important legal and political differences (Taiwan is a United Nations outcast currently recognized by only 25 countries, while Israel is a UN member nation recognized by China, Russia, the US and 157 other countries, including two of Israel's Arab neighbors and former foes, Egypt and Jordan), the Taiwanese view is that its moral case for statehood is no weaker than Israel's, given that a Jewish State in predominantly Arab, British-controlled Palestine came into existence against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants. Taiwanese officials argue that while it is true Israel in part owes its existence to a UN resolution that partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the 1948 vote for partition would have been a non-starter in a post-colonial-era UN.

China to Allow Local Communist Party Elections: China is taking a significant step toward political reform--at least, that is what Beijing wants the world to believe.The ruling Communist Party announced Monday that it would hold local elections for the first time. An offical described the move as "an enormous step."

...In this regard, Beijing could be adopting old ideas floated long ago by sympathetic critics of two very different repressive regimes--the USSR and Imperial Iran. Years before both systems fell, attempts were made to persuade Soviet leaders and the autocratic Shah to reform their ruling parties by allowing multicandidate elections and, in the case of the Rastakhiz (Resurrection) Party, to transform it into a means of upward mobility for great masses of Iranians left behind by the monarch's White Revolution. The proposals and suggestions fell on deaf ears.But China seems to be listening....

China Poised to Crack Down on Foreign Law Firms: The memo details "illegal activities" that most of the foreign law firms doing business in China are allegedly engaged in, describing the activities as "serious" and "severe" threats to "China's legal system and economic safety." Shanghai is most threatened, according to the document.The principal sin seems to be practicing Chinese law without a license.In 2005, there were 82 "foreign law firms" in Shanghai, and 16 more "established by Hong Kong law firms," the memo notes. While recognizing that foreign law firms "bring advanced new concepts and management experience to China," the memo asserts that their "illegal business activities are becoming serious" and must be stopped.

Beijing has used executions to crack down on white-collar crimes and executed batches of prisoners in public rallies scheduled at national holidays to maximize attention. "Sentences often depend greatly on the political climate and timing," Amnesty International says on its website. The group says Beijing's use of capital punishment "targets poor and marginalized groups including ethnic minorities, migrant communities, political dissidents and so-called 'separatists.' "
Under Chinese rules, the initial trial and appeal in capital cases are heard by the same court. Most condemned prisoners are executed without having higher courts review their cases.
Most of those put to death were given limited access to defense lawyers; others were convicted on the basis of confessions they made after beatings by police, says Katie Lee, director of the Great Britain-China Center, a London-based organization working on judicial changes with Chinese legal officials. "Torture is rampant during custody and questioning stages. Verdicts are often decided behind closed doors prior to the trial proceedings," Amnesty International says on its website.

...Under China's New Policy:
• Appeals in all death sentence cases must be heard in open court. Lawyers for the accused, now restricted to written appeals, will be allowed to make oral arguments.
• Lethal injections, administered in vans traveling from prison to prison, will increasingly replace shootings. (For now, most of those put to death are executed in public — shot in the back of the head after being forced to kneel and open their mouths so the bullet will do minimal damage to facial features.)
• Final approval in each capital case will eventually move to an arm of China's highest court, the Supreme People's Court, which will review cases individually, according to the state-run People's Daily newspaper.
"This will greatly reduce the number of executions — by at least 20%-30%," says Huang Jingping, law professor at People's University.

40 years after start of 'years of chaos', China's top lawyer says lessons must be learned : Although President Hu Jintao says that China is moving towards rule by law, political interference in judicial decision-making is the norm at all levels. "It is ridiculous that party cadres who have no legal qualification are taking the place of the courts in administering justice," said Zhang. "But in the current environment, it has become almost a rule of the game."

China seeks good-looking sailors : Officials say anyone joining the service in 2006 must be good-looking, tall and polite. Manners and looks matter because navy vessels often visit other countries and host reciprocal visits, a spokesman has told the official Xinhua news agency. Biff- doesn't sound too belligerent.

2006-05-15T10:09:00.000+08:00

A rural crisis is forcing Beijing to reconsider the idea of private property: When Deng Xiaoping began introducing market reforms nearly three decades ago, his aides quickly broke up rural "people's communes" into family farms, triggering a dramatic rise in peasant incomes. Today, however, the small farmers who make up the majority of China's population (849 million out of 1.3 billion people) are suffering. Last year rural per capita income was about $400 while the average city dweller's income reached $1,300.

...China's rural residents are hurt by a simple fact: The country still lacks private-property rights. Chinese cannot legally own land. They can only obtain land-use rights—for 70 years in cities and 30 years in the countryside. On top of that, urban residents are allowed to sell those rights, while rural residents in practice have a much harder time doing so.

...The liberals' riposte came in the form of the March 4 conference, sponsored by the China Institute of Reform and Development. The meeting was opened by institute head Gao Shangquan, who was quoted as criticizing "a certain professor's letter" and scoffing at leftists' accusations that a conspiracy "of neoliberalism is guiding reform, planted by the American CIA." Shortly afterward, left-leaning scholars reportedly posted the meeting's minutes online—so that they could excoriate liberal views expressed at the gathering. A couple weeks ago they reportedly held their own conference, during which one participant called for reviving Cultural Revolution-style class struggle.

What China Threat? - Sinophobia was short-lived in Mexico. As the only big manufacturing exporter to the United States in Latin America, Mexico was uniquely worried about the threat posed by cheaper labor in Asia. More than 800 assembly plants known as maquiladoras closed their doors between 2001 and 2004, resulting in the loss of over 200,000 jobs. From late 2001 through 2003, the maquiladora industry shrank by 0.4 percent annually, and everyone assumed they knew the cause. The "China threat" quickly became the stuff of popular headlines—and has faded just as quickly now that Mexico is back.

...Mexico learned that lesson the hard way. Its manufacturing industry is centered in states on the U.S. border, which are reminiscent in some ways of the boom provinces of southern China. And the western state of Jalisco has emerged as the Silicon Valley of Mexico. The capital city of Guadalajara hosts giants like Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, as well as subcontractors that build the printers and laptops sold under those brand names. During the slump, two such subcontractors—On Semiconductors and Multek—closed their plants. Some firms that remained began to transfer operations to China. "We lost several production lines—low-cost ink-jet printers, laptops, cell phones—that moved to China," says Federico Lepe, Jalisco's deputy secretary for foreign trade and investment. "We needed to transform ourselves from being a perspiration industry to an inspiration industry."

...Mexico's rebound is a reminder that geography still matters. As transportation costs mount, Mexico's advantages over China are particularly obvious for makers of cars and other bulky items. California-based Sanmina-SCI supplies more than 20 blue-chip corporate clients from its operations in Mexico. Its five plants in Guadalajara produce everything from MRI body scanners for Philips to auto components for Ford, GM and Chrysler. It promises to meet any U.S. order within 24 to 48 hours and stay abreast of the demands of consumer-electronics makers, which change product lineups every three to six months. Chinese firms, who lose five to six weeks shipping to the United States by sea, can't keep up. "If you were to order ice cream from China you would get five containers of vanilla," says Marco Gonzalez Hagelsieb, senior vice president of Mexico operations for Sanmina-SCI. "Whereas Mexico is Baskin-Robbins: we can mix and match flavors and deliver the ice cream the next day."

(video) In Focus: Anarchy in the PRC - They are part of China’s first generation to grow up with both prosperity and exposure to Western pop culture. Members of Reflector, a Chinese punk rock band, have adopted expressions of dissent that not long ago would have cost musicians their lives. But today, punk rock is Beijing chic.

Avian Flu Wanes in Asian Nations It First Hit Hard : Even as it crops up in the far corners of Europe and Africa, the virulent bird flu that raised fears of a human pandemic has been largely snuffed out in the parts of Southeast Asia where it claimed its first and most numerous victims. Health officials are pleased and excited. "In Thailand and Vietnam, we've had the most fabulous success stories," said Dr. David Nabarro, chief pandemic flu coordinator for the United Nations. Vietnam, which has had almost half of the human cases of A(H5N1) flu in the world, has not seen a single case in humans or a single outbreak in poultry this year. Thailand, the second-hardest-hit nation until Indonesia recently passed it, has not had a human case in nearly a year or one in poultry in six months.
Encouraging signs have also come from China, though they are harder to interpret.
These are the second positive signals that officials have seen recently in their struggle to prevent avian flu from igniting a human pandemic. Confounding expectations, birds making the spring migration north from Africa have not carried the virus into Europe. Biff- is any of this really surprising?

Fake chip storm rocks China’s science elite: The government wants to ensure that as the economy becomes enmeshed with the rest of world – and its rules governing intellectual property rights – that China develops its own commercial technologies rather than buying in from overseas.

The 21st Century Business Herald, a respected newspaper that has pursued the case, reported that Mr Chen had taken chips produced by Freescale Semiconductor, formerly a unit of Motorola, and then used low-paid migrant workers to scrub its trademarks off and replace them with that of Hanxin. Neither company was available for comment.
Mr Chen’s own project had received Rmb114m ($14.2m) for research to develop the Hanxin chips. Xinhua said he had been asked to pay back the money.

...“Jiaotong University has warned its professors and researchers to be disciplined and to comply with ethical codes in scientific research,” Xinhua said.
The university, whose famous graduates include Jiang Zemin, the former president, said it strongly supported “the severe actions taken by relevant government departments”.
“In the future, the school will strengthen its management of research and its oversight of research funds.”

2006-05-13T19:23:00.000+08:00

The People's Action Party shows that it remains one of the world's most successful political machines - The “men in white”—the colour of the PAP's campaign uniforms, signifying integrity—have won all ten elections since Singapore's independence from Britain (via a brief, unhappy marriage to Malaysia) in the 1960s. The party, led for decades by Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, and now by his son, Lee Hsien Loong, raised the city-state to first-world income levels. In each election it has convinced Singaporeans it would be foolish to risk this prosperity by voting it out.

...Critics of Singapore's government point to its tight restrictions on political protest and its repeated use of defamation suits against the opposition and journalists. In the run-up to the election the PAP sued the tiny Singapore Democratic Party, arguing that one of its campaign leaflets had impugned the ruling party's honesty—the one thing that is guaranteed to inflame its ire. The party's leader, Chee Soon Juan, has already been bankrupted by a PAP lawsuit. Several of his colleagues, named in the new lawsuit, quickly apologised and agreed to pay damages.

...Desmond Lim, a defeated candidate of the Singapore Democratic Alliance, concedes that the fragmented opposition would do better if it united. Mr Lee senior, still in the cabinet as “minister mentor”, aged 82, is harsher, saying recently that Singapore needed “a world-class opposition, not this riffraff”. What is clear is that the PAP does not just win by squashing its opponents. Its tenth successive victory shows that it remains a most formidable political machine.

...The reasons for the PAP's success are manifold, but the main one, as it never fails to remind voters, is that it has always kept its promise of efficient and clean government. Singapore's economy continues to grow at tigerish rates—9% in the year to March.

Chinese Siege Warfare Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity - An Illustrated History

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos : Parry, who wrote for The Independent and now works for The Times of London, made a number of forays into Indonesia from Japan. Through Parry's eyes we are taken into the murderous jungles of Borneo, where Dayak tribesmen were seeking to drive out the Madurese by ethnic cleansing, into Jakarta's universities during the drive to oust Suharto, and into the turmoil of East Timor, seeking its independence from Indonesia. Parry makes the point early on: "This is a book about violence, and about being afraid.

Parry also is fascinated by what he found in Indonesia. As he states, "Although I prided myself on deploring violence, if it should - tragically - break out, I wanted to witness it for myself." Indeed, deeper in the book (and deeper into Indonesia's heart of darkness), he notes: "In Borneo, I saw heads severed from their bodies and men eating flesh. In Jakarta, I saw burned corpses in the street, and shots were fired around and toward me."

President Chen's long trip to nowhere If relations are cool, that means a quick refueling job in some place like Anchorage, the president required to remain on board. So Washington's offer of Alaska was correctly interpreted in Taipei as a deliberate snub and was rejected.

The whole trip was an acrobatic performance. If he meant to piss Washington off, he should have made a stopover in Iran or North Korea," said Antonio Chiang, former deputy secretary general of Taiwan's National Security Council. "Chen has tried very hard, but he didn't do Taiwan's diplomacy any good."

...At a press conference in Costa Rica, Chen defended himself by arguing, "I'm not doing this for fun. I would rather take less time, but I need to be concerned with Taiwan's dignity." Neglecting urges to stop the steady decline in US-Taiwan bilateral ties, Chen chose to make a surprise visit to Libya followed by Indonesia on his return journey rather than transit in Alaska. A proposed stop in Lebanon, however, was not approved. Interpreting the scenario's development, Michael Green, former senior director at the National Security Council for Asian Affairs and now senior adviser at the CSIS, said: "I think the senior people in Washington were nervous after President Chen's remarks on abolishing the National Unification Council and were being extra cautious for fear that President Chen might surprise them again on US soil."

2006-05-12T01:10:00.000+08:00

CHINA AND THE “OTHER” WEST: THE EUROPEAN UNION, AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND NEW ZEALAND: China’s relationship with Europe has always had a strong focus on economic and trade interactions via the Silk Road; the Cohong system of the 18th and early 19th centuries; and under Beijing’s unequal treaty relationship during the “100 years of humiliation” in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. In the post-Cold War period, China’s relationship with Europe has been guided by economic considerations. In 2005, the European Union emerged as China’s leading trade partner while Canada and Australia were China’s ninth and tenth largest trading partners respectively (Chinese Ministry of Commerce). New Zealand is the first Western state to grant China the status of “market economy” while Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to New Zealand in April reaffirmed China’s commitment to implementing a free trade agreement with New Zealand within two years, making New Zealand potentially the first developed Western country to reach a free trade agreement with China.

...Canada has the world’s second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and investing in oil sands remains a lucrative venture as long as oil prices remain high. In May 2005, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) acquired a 40 percent stake in Canada's Northern Lights oil sands project and in April 2005 China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) acquired one-sixth of MEG Energy Corporation. PetroChina has also signed a preliminary agreement to buy half of the crude transported through the Gateway project, an oil pipeline being developed by Enbridge to connect Alberta to Canada's Pacific coast (Dow Jones News, April 8). Some in the United States have expressed concern over China’s growing energy interests in its backyard, especially as the U.S. is Canada’s leading oil export market.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian has made a surprise transit stop in Libya, on his way home from Latin America. The Chinese "sought brutally and savagely to block the transit stops and foreign trips of our senior officials," Mr Chen said as he left Taipei.

Hepatitis Risk for East Asians in New York : The study, led by researchers at New York University School of Medicine, found that 15 percent of east Asians in New York — as many as 100,000 people — are chronic hepatitis carriers, with the rate highest among immigrants from China. That infection rate is 35 times the rate found in the general population.

MIRRORING TAIWAN: CHINA AND CUBA - On the surface, Sino-Cuba relations may be difficult to take seriously. Hu Jintao heads the world’s largest and most explosively developing county while Fidel Castro stands astride a faraway, skinny island with one of the most stagnant economies in the world. In 1960 Cuba was the first Latin American country to recognize China’s new communist government. Yet early friendly relations turned sour toward the end of the decade with the emergence of the Sino-Soviet dispute. Since Castro saw his “destiny” as waging a war against the United States, he needed the kind of financial support and military shield that only Moscow could then provide.

...Fidel Castro has long attracted disciples from Berkeley to Hanoi, but he has never been able to make his small country work. Indeed, with few exceptions, he is regarded as an economic “numbskull” (a term he used in 1979 to characterize Deng Xiaoping) of epic proportions who has almost always had to rely on massive handouts from foreign patrons.

...Cuba is believed to have the world’s third largest nickel reserves and Beijing is pumping $500 million into doubling the island’s annual production. There are smaller Chinese investments in directional drilling rigs and other products for oil exploration and production. Beijing has given aid, postponed debt repayments and arranged credit with preferential interest rates and repayment schedules.

...Of particular interest is a comment attributed to Hu Jintao in late-2004, stating that "in ideological supervision, we should learn from Cuba and North Korea" (Kai Fang, December 2004). Yinghong Cheng said in an interview that the comment has circulated widely among Chinese intellectuals and is thought to reflect a Maoist-leftist tendency in Hu's thinking and governance (May 7), as does his relationship with Castro.

Vietnamese woman 'sold at market' Malaysian media reported that a 60-year-old man paid some $5,000 (£2,700) for her, possibly as a bride. Reports said she had run out of money in Malaysia and offered herself for sale as a means of raising some cash.

"All actions relating to illegal marriage intermediation must be strictly banned." Biff- All... illegal... must be... banned. - A common sort of developing nation tautology.

South Korea recently apologised to Vietnam after a newspaper ran a Seoul picture of Vietnamese women lining up for a prospective Korean husband.

2006-05-10T11:40:00.000+08:00

Dalai Lama 'behind Lhasa unrest': The official Xinhua news agency said 17 Tibetans on 14 March destroyed a pair of statues at Lhasa's Ganden Monastery depicting the deity Dorje Shugden. Lhasa's mayor blamed the destruction on followers of the Dalai Lama, who sees Dorje Shugden as a divisive force. Analysts accused China of exploiting any dispute for political ends.

...China and the Dalai Lama have been engaged in secretive talks for years, and met for a fifth round of talks in February, but have made little progress. The Dalai Lama has called for Tibetan autonomy within China, but China repeatedly labels him a separatist and says he seeks full independence.

The Yin And Yang And The Apples And Oranges On Chinese Courts : About a week ago, I did a post touting the fairness of China's courts, entitled, "China's Courts are Fair." That post was based, in large part, on Professor Tseming Yang's (hence the "Yang" in my title -- groan!) post on his Citizen Yang blog, entitled "Local Governments Lose 30-50% of Administrative Lawsuits," noting "local [Chinese] governments lose an astonishing 30-50% of law suits in China."
I said I was not astonished by these numbers and I referred back to one of my previous posts, entitled, China Rises -- The TV Show/"Food is Heaven," where I noted the success rate small players had in their lawsuits in Chinese courts against big polluting companies.
I then went on to qualify my "China's courts are fair" assertion by noting that the Chinese courts virtually never rule against the government when central government policy is at issue and that I am ignoring criminal and political cases. I also stated that "the chances of getting a fair trial are much greater in prosperous commercial cities like Shanghai, Tianjin, or Qingdao, than they are in a small city in Anhui Province. I know too that a foreign company prevailing against a powerful local company in a Chinese court is always going to be less likely than if all parties are of the same strata:"
So China's courts are not always fair.
But, they are fair way more often than credited by the western media and I am absolutely convinced (as are all of the Chinese lawyers with whom we work) that they are fair often enough to make it as ill-advised to do business in China without written contracts or Intellectual Property (IP) protections as to do business that way in the West.
Even if China's courts are fair only 60% of the time, this is enough to cause the rational Chinese businessperson to make decisions based on legal ramifications.

Competing with China for African hearts and minds: As the chart (compiled by Travis with data from a BBC poll) hints, Central and Southern Africans view U.S. influence very positively, more so than Chinese influence. According to another poll, Africa is the only continent where a majority (55%) of the population views the U.S. in a positive light.

Competing with China for African hearts and minds/2: So it is surprising --and in my opinion telling of Chinese soft power ambitions in Africa-- that China today is by far the largest contributor to peacekeeping missions of the 5 nations holding permanent Security Council seats.
In March 2006, China had 1,137 peacekeepers deployed, of which 876 were troops, 189 were police personnel and 72 were military observers. Overall, that is the 14th biggest contribution out of 108 countries. By way of comparison, the US has 369, the UK 344, France 584 and Russia 207. While India sends a whopping 9,061, China's contributions are impressive, especially if compared with the past: in March 2001, it had 96.

America’s China “Experts” : Just who are America’s China “experts?” And the question we all really want answered: do any of them actually speak Chinese?

Wall Street ended Tuesday... carrying the Dow Jones industrials to a fresh six-year high and within reach of its best-ever close. ...analysts say the Dow is poised to break its record and could push higher. ...The Dow rose 55.23, or 0.48 percent, to 11,639.77. The index of 30 blue-chip stocks is 83 points from its all-time closing high of 11,722.98, reached Jan. 14, 2000.

Armoured suits are 'too goofy' say US troops: The water-cooled "alien spacesuits" are being handed out to turret gunners in their notoriously vulnerable Humvee vehicles... Capt Larry Bergeron told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes that the armour was credited with saving the lives of three men sprayed with shrapnel from roadside bombs. "One soldier's visor stopped a piece of shrapnel that hit dead centre," he said. "If he had not had that suit on, the effects could have been catastrophic."

2006-05-09T16:02:00.000+08:00

Teaching Political Theory in Beijing: Academic publications are surprisingly free: there aren’t any personal attacks on leaders or open calls for multiparty rule, but particular policies, such as the household registry system, which limits internal mobility, are subject to severe criticism. In 2004, state television, for the first time in history, broadcast the U.S. presidential elections live, without any obvious political slant. (I suspect that the turmoil surrounding the 2000 U.S. presidential elections, along with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, discredited U.S.-style democracy among many Chinese, and the government has less to fear from the model.) More surprisingly, perhaps, I was not given any explicit (or implicit, as far as I could tell) guidance regarding what I could teach at Tsinghua. My course proposals have been approved as submitted.

...However, I also made some comments about the ancient thinker Mencius—I argued that he justified “punitive expeditions” that were functionally similar to modern-day humanitarian interventions—that were not published. The Chinese government does not support any infringements on state sovereignty, and the newspaper probably worried that readers would draw implications for contemporary debates. To my surprise, the editor of the newspaper phoned me to apologize, explaining that the article was “reviewed” by a party cadre and that he had no hand in the matter. He also offered to publish the interview in full in an academic publication that would not be subject to the same sorts of constraints.

Fujian woos a skeptical Taiwan: "Fujian has a reputation of failing to implement market-economy polices, instead it emphasizes politics," explained a senior official at Taiwan's semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Corruption is another issue. The Yuanhua case is just one [example]," the official added. In that notorious case, broken in 2000-01, the Yuanhua Group smuggled cars, luxury goods, oil and other goods into Fujian's Xiamen city, cheating the state of about $4 billion.

Thousands of government officials were involved: Lai Changxing, the chairman of Lianhua group, had corrupted them by such means as wining and dining them, hiring their children, or secretly filming them cavorting with hostesses at his "underground palace", known as the "Little Red Mansion". Allegedly, Lai even attempted to bribe then-premier Zhu Rongji to the tune of $2 billion. But Zhu responded by sending hundreds of police investigators from outside the province to Fujian, and dozens of officials were shot in the ensuing crackdown.

Complaints about local government corruption are widely circulated among Fujian-based Taiwan businessmen. The chairman of the Fuzhou Chamber of Trade, Hsu Jiun-Da, was arrested and interrogated for a week in 2002 after he publicly criticized the local government's performance. Hsu, a Taiwanese businessman who once operated a textile factory and invested in a hospital there, has been withdrawing his investment from the province.

End of the road for Japanese village: This mountain village on the west coast, withered to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go on. So, after months of anguish, the villagers settled on a drastic solution: selling all of Ogama to an industrial-waste company from Tokyo, which will turn it into a landfill. With the proceeds, the villagers plan to pack up everything, including their family graves, and move in the next few years to yet-uncertain destinations, most likely becoming the first community in Japan to cease to exist voluntarily.

...academics have coined a term - "villages that have reached their limits" - to describe those with populations that are more than half elderly. Of 140 villages in Monzen, the municipality that includes Ogama, 40% have fewer than 10 households, inhabited mostly by the elderly.

...Ogama lies in a valley in a mountain facing the sea, reached by a single-lane road that winds its way through a deep green forest where foxes and raccoon dogs - forest-dwellers that, in Japanese myth, trick human beings by shifting their shapes - are spotted regularly. The road ends here.

Biff- you cain't have it both ways: high population density and a pristine environment. The hollowing out isn't just taking place in Japan but also in parts of Europe and in the US Mid-west and the Plains. For all the guff about disappearing forests, the hollowing out phenomenon has been ongoing in the US since around the Great Depression. Forest cover has been growing steadily nationwide.

2006-05-08T12:13:00.000+08:00

"In about 30 years, the forest will be gone": Indonesia says it expects China to invest $30 billion in the next decade, a big infusion of capital that contrasts with the declining investment by American companies here and in the region.
Much of that Chinese investment is aimed at the extractive industries and infrastructure like refineries, railroads and toll roads to help speed the flow of Indonesia's plentiful coal, oil, gas, timber and palm oil to China's ports.
In one of the latest deals, on April 19, Indonesia announced that China had placed a $1 billion rush order for a million cubic yards of a prized reddish-brown hardwood, called merbau, to be used in construction of its sports facilities for the 2008 Olympic Games.
Merbau wood, mostly prevalent in Papua's virgin forests, has been illegally logged and shipped to China since the late 1990's, stripping large swathes of forest in the Indonesian province on the western side of the island of New Guinea.

Chinese reoccupying Russia: Whatever the basis of the love-in between Putin and Chinese President Jintao, the Russian and Chinese people on the whole hate and mistrust each other.
The 5 million Russians who live in Russia's provinces bordering China's northeast (population 107 million) are nervous and frightened. The Treaty of Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation that the two leaders signed in 2001 and the "final resolution" of the centuries-old border dispute earlier this year have done nothing to assuage that hatred and fear. Measures taken by the leaders do not have the support of either the people of northeast China or the people of Russia's border provinces.

...Chinese people are taught in school that the Russian provinces on the other side of the 4300-km border, or Outer Manchuria, are Chinese. They were "stolen" from China in two unequal treaties that the Russian czar forced on a weak China in 1858 and 1860 at the beginning of the Hundred Years of Humiliation. Not only their textbooks but all of their leaders up to Hu Jintao have told them that these provinces will return to China one day, just as Hong Kong and Macau did.
The Russians in the southern provinces of Far East Russia also are angry about the 2001 treaty, and about one in 2006. They believe the treaties give too much away to the Chinese.
The Chinese are living in the past they say: Territories that the Russians colonized in the 19th century were of no interest to the Chinese; the Chinese made no effort to occupy and develop the area, which only technically came under Chinese sovereignty in another unequal treaty that the strong Manchu emperor forced upon a weak czar, with the help of the Jesuits, in 1648.

...While we were waiting in no man's land, another Russian was sitting near us (we never did discover why). We were sat by a large flower pot. The Chinese guard who was holding our passports was digging in the soil with a wooden ladle. He suddenly loaded the ladle with soil and pushed it toward the mouth of the Russian and said "would you like to eat dirt?"
The hatred between local Chinese and Russians is palpable. Russians are moving out of this province and others that make up Russia's Far East as fast as they can; Chinese are moving in -- far more than officially admitted. Not a basis for long-term tranquillity and happiness.

Despite Beijing's promises of electoral accountability, rural voters are facing violent intimidation: It could hardly be further from the centre of power in Beijing, but Feng is treated like a threat to the state. He is followed by police, his phone is tapped and he is frequently called in for questioning by the authorities. His supporters suffer similar treatment. For more than six months, Taishi has been gripped by fear. Interviewed in the nearby town of Panyu, locals say Taishi village is patrolled by thugs who threaten critics of the local chief and police who monitor every vehicle that comes in and out of the community of 2,100 people.

Chinese weather specialists used chemicals to engineer Beijing's heaviest rainfall of the year, helping to relieve drought and rinse dust from China's capital, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday. Technicians with the Beijing Weather Modification Office fired seven rocket shells containing 163 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide over the city's skies on Thursday, Xinhua said. ...Though unusual in many parts of the world, China has been tinkering with artificial rainmaking for decades...

Seldom mentioned, however, is the fact that cable news is equally geriatric. Indeed, Fox News Channel and CNN are two of only three leading basic networks (the other being the Hallmark Channel) whose median viewer age is over 60. Headline News rings in next at 59.9, and MSNBC is still on the rickety side at 57.

...Pedophiles, in fact, have become the de facto star of the May rating sweeps, low-lighted by KCBS-TV in Los Angeles promoting a piece about child molesters living near Disneyland. It's the most cynical kind of scare tactic ("Your children might be in danger!") designed to reel in young women, mirroring Fox News host Greta Van Susteren's obsession with the Natalee Holloway case.
Admittedly, such appeals are easier and cheaper to do than substantive reporting. Just don't put lipstick on the pig, as Van Susteren did last year by calling missing persons "an epidemic." It's only an epidemic, frankly, if you glean all your news from her nightly police blotter and sister of woe Nancy Grace on CNN Headline News.
The cable nets' older profiles have also yielded absurd exchanges about demographic superiority, such as the boast that more young adults view MSNBC's Keith Olbermann than CNN's Paula Zahn. Whichever midget is taller, the truth remains that the vast majority of young adults have no interest in either.

Chinese-American space program possible: Bush has promised Hu that NASA Administrator Michael Griffin will travel to China this year for more definitive discussions. China also joined 11 other nations as well as the European Space Agency in Washington for the opening round of NASA-led discussions on cooperative exploration of the moon.
"For the president to say there will be discussions with China is a major step forward," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an analyst at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. "That has been absolutely forbidden in the past." Biff- Looks good.

2006-05-07T23:43:00.000+08:00

Facing Isolation, Taiwan Woos Latin America: Chen's trip comes as some of Taiwan's 25 diplomatic allies, like Panama, the Vatican and the Solomon Islands, are holding secret talks with China on switching recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Some other allies are also mulling changing sides due to the expanding political and economic power of China. One of them, Haiti, has barred Taiwan's Premier Su Tseng-chang from attending the May 14 inauguration of President-elect Rene Preva, after China had threatened to veto UN's extending the mandate for peacekeeping force in Haiti in August. This is the first time a diplomatic ally has declined a visit by a Taiwan leader.

Military muscles bulging in SE Asia: Many Southeast Asian buyers spoke about long-overdue military modernization needs as the incentive behind their purchases. Others suggested they needed to prepare to repel armed insurgencies or unmentioned full state threats.

The unspoken subtext is the perceived need to safeguard against China's growing military might in the event Beijing someday takes on a more aggressive foreign policy toward its smaller regional neighbors. The Rand Corporation, a respected US-based think-tank, estimates that China, which claimed to have a $29 billion defense budget last year, actually spent between $42 billion and $51 billion in a rapid, if not secretive, military modernization drive.

There was plenty of geostrategic politics at play at the Kuala Lumpur arms show. Russia, which is aiming to ramp up global sales for its military hardware and strategically counterbalance China's growing economic influence in the region, was particularly active in brokering deals. Russian arms dealers have recently had a large measure of success in peddling their wares in Southeast Asia, signing contracts with Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia for aircraft exports worth nearly half of Russia's total global exports in recent years.

US, Seoul parting ways over North Korea: Human Rights Watch, dominated by former Clinton administration people, came out with a report this week that said North Korea had reversed its reformist policies and was again banning the private sale of grain. The grain, Washington advocacy director Tom Malinowski said, was going to the elite, not the millions who needed it most. North Korea, "has gone back to precisely the same set of policies that were a primary cause of that terrible disaster" of the 1990s in which at least 1 million people starved to death, said Malinowski, a former speech writer for former president Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.

...about 6,000 North Korean workers are toiling away for South Korean companies. They're paid US$57.50 a month, a fortune by North Korean standards, and in a few years the complex will become a regional hub hiring half a million workers for international companies, according to the project's South Korean directors. The Americans frankly regard all this hype as nonsense. They say no workers see the money that's paid into North Korean accounts. They believe they're toiling away for almost nothing, living under terrible conditions, clothed and fed just enough so they'll be able to go on working. These charges, publicized by Jay Lefkowitz, a New York lawyer appointed by President George W Bush as his part-time envoy on human rights in North Korea, not only incense the Unification Ministry but cloud the future of a free trade agreement on which the United States and South Korea begin negotiations in June.

...The United States has repeatedly rejected South Korean insistence that South Korean troops in time of war should not revert to American command. The US view is that only one general can take charge in a war, and the United States, with all the means of modern war at its disposal, would have to rescue South Korea as it did in 1950. But would the United States again ride to the rescue? US forces are pulling back, in a controversial decision, viewed with alarm by some Koreans, to reposition its forces well south of Seoul rather than on the historic invasion route between North Korea and the capital. The United States is also reducing the number of bases while cutting down its forces from 37,000 two years ago to 29,500 today to 25,000 at the end of the decade.

Bigots, racists and worthless buffoons - so why do they keep getting elected?: It didn't hurt Respect in the East End, where the party did well on Thursday. Once again, we find a slice of the electorate in a poor part of Britain that is so lost in identity politics and victimhood that it will vote for those who stoke their rage, no matter how worthless they are.

Biff-Sounds much like the allegiance of African-American voters to both the Democratic Party and to black leaders who hide their Caribbean antecedents (Married blacks of Caribbean ancestry on average earn more per capita in the US than married Caucasians, not to mention the traditional contempt of Caribbean immigrant blacks for American blacks).

The conventional wisdom is that far right parties are driven back into the undergrowth when the electorate sees them for what they are. Historically, that has been the case, but those who expect the BNP and Respect to disappear should look at what has happened to Sinn Fein.
Eighteen months ago, pundits predicted its support would collapse after the IRA stole £26m from the Northern Bank and its drunken sadists murdered Robert McCartney in a Belfast pub. After that, everyone should have been able to see that the peace process had turned it into Ireland's version of the Mafia. Its political purpose was a distant memory - the Mafia originally tried to protect Sicilians from foreign invaders; its made men saw themselves as above the law; it had pet politicians to provide it with excuses; and could threaten both the British and Irish states with an escalation of the violence if its profits from racketeering were endangered.
But in both the north and the south of Ireland, Sinn Fein support has held steady. I hope I'm wrong, but the lesson from Ireland is that nothing sectarian politicians do can shake the doltish faith of their supporters.

No Gun Ri: No Gun Ri is a village in South Korea, located in Hwanggan-myeon, Yeongdong County, North Chungcheong province. During the early days of the Korean War, a highly publicized massacre took place in which a group of Korean refugees, and possibly North Korean infiltrators, were killed by elements of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment.

Biff- A few years back, watched the Cspan debate between the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter of this story and the cavalry regiment's historian. Under questioning, it became clear the reporter didn't know what he was talking about from time to time. Reporters, after all, seldom have time for in-depth investigation. But in this case, he came out of the debate looking much, much the worse for wear. My conclusion was that the reporter was a second-rate con-man taken to the cleaners by a first-rate crook who bit off more than he could chew. Unfortunately the video ain't up at Cspan or you could judge for yourself.

...Soon after the awarding of the Pulitzer, however, a U.S. News & World Report article questioned the credibility of one of the witnesses relied upon in the AP report. Using the same Army records consulted by the AP, the news magazine pointed out the discrepencies which pointed towards fraud on the part of at least one key witness. The person in question was Edward Daily, who had claimed to have been eyewitness both to killings at No Gun Ri and an order to carry them out. The US News story alleged, based on army reports, that he was not in fact part of any unit at No Gun Ri anywhere near the time in question and was not, as he had claimed to have been, a machine gunner. The AP initially stuck by Daily, who had reaffirmed his claims to numerous other media outlets...

However, after the expose by other journalism outlets, the AP reinterviewed Daily who, when confronted with army records which conflicted his personal testimony, admitted that he could not have been at the scene of the incident and instead had heard of it second hand. Daily was in fact a mechanic during the war and did not join the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry until 1951. He later plead guilty to defrauding the government for collecting over $300,000 in benefits for combat-releated trauma over nearly fifteen years.

...Robert Bateman, a former member of the 7th Cavalry Regiment and an academic historian at West Point, authored a book after The Bridge at No Gun Ri was published. No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident is highly critical of the AP team's findings and calls into question both evidence presented to the reporters as well as their interpretation of the findings.

...Bateman demonstrated the plasticity of memory and susceptibility of some "memories" to outside suggestions from influential figures such as Daily, who had written two books on the history of the unit. Another AP witness inadvertently demonstrated Bateman's point in a front-page New York Times article. Veteran Eugene Hesselman would adamantly deny the charge that Daily was not at No Gun Ri when confronted; "I know that Daily was there. I know that. I know that." He and others, including Pfc. Delos Flint, come under scrutiny in Bateman's book for their recollection of events and are suggested to have not even been there just as Daily was not.

...The result of the official Army inquiry was released in January 2001. Among its findings:

...Estimates of the time length of fire range from a few minutes to four days.
U.S. commanders did not issue orders to fire on civilians in No Gun Ri during July 25-29.
Pilots were not ordered to kill civilians in the vicinity of No Gun Ri.
Interviewed veterans said deadly force was not authorized against civilians who posed no threat, and they were not given orders to shoot and kill civilians.
Some veterans believed they had the ability to use deadly force if civilians did not halt from passing their position.

...The summary concludes: "Neither the documentary evidence nor the U.S. veterans’ statements reviewed by the U.S. Review Team support a hypothesis of deliberate killing of Korean civilians. What befell civilians in the vicinity of No Gun Ri in late July 1950 was a tragic and deeply regrettable accompaniment to a war forced upon unprepared U.S. and ROK forces."

2006-05-06T12:43:00.000+08:00

China Customs -- Your IP Friend: The fact that you are manufacturing your product in China just for export does not in any way minimize the need for you to protect your trademark. Once someone registers “your” trademark in China, they have the power to stop your goods at the border and prevent them from leaving China. That's right, they can stop your goods from leaving because they own the trademark, not you. We are aware of companies having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their trademark "back" and to get their goods flowing out of China again.

Why China Won't Slow Down: A number of business people (mostly in the food business) have told me it is China's low crime rate and relative lack of corruption that is their reason for focusing on China instead of some of the other emerging market countries where they formerly did business. Let's face it, China is generally a nice place to visit and many other emerging market countries are not.

...I am amazed at how often it is that I have become aware of a problem in China, only to see the government put in place an innovative solution within months in an effort to remedy it. China's government is not democratic, but it would be wrong to deny it is "agile" and "energetic."

2006-05-05T17:20:00.000+08:00

Net censorship spreads worldwide: Where China has led, other nations are following and taking active steps to filter the net before it gets to their citizens. Zimbabwe is reportedly buying technology directly from China to beef up its censorship efforts.
Many other nations, including Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam censor the net. Often this filtering involves stopping access to some types of sites, such as those showing pornography, but it can also involve blocking sites critical of governments or religions.
Some nations, such as Turkmenistan, have banned home net connections and restrict people to using net cafes which, said the RSF, were much easier to control. Burma has banned web e-mail systems such as Hotmail and Yahoo mail and every five minutes screen grabs are taken of what people are looking at in net cafes.

Communists, oil and the Florida coast: America's energy policies have been so counterproductive during the past 20 years that the time has now arrived when the communist governments of China and Cuba can jointly teach us a lesson about supply and demand. For years, the United States has refused to explore for oil in the 90-mile-wide waters separating Cuba and Florida. Now, Cuba is enlisting help from China, India and other interested parties in an effort to explore for oil in Cuban waters 50 miles off the Florida coast.

...Even ANWR's huge reserves pale compared to oil located throughout the waters of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of Interior estimates that the OCS contains 76 billion barrels of oil in yet-to-be-discovered fields. That's three and a half times U.S. proved oil reserves. Offshore oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico alone are estimated to be more than 40 billion barrels, much of it precluded from exploration by official U.S. policy. Compared to U.S. proved natural-gas reserves of 189 trillion cubic feet, the MMS estimates that the Gulf of Mexico alone holds more than 200 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas. While celebrating their success in preventing American energy companies from exploring for oil and gas between Florida and Cuba, environmentalists and Florida politicians ought to contemplate China's egregious environmental record as they look with horror at Chinese drilling rigs soon to be dispersed throughout Cuban waters less than 50 miles from the Florida coast.

Falun Gong Practitioners Attacked in Indonesia: Actually it is not hard to guess who is behind this, because in the whole world, only the CCP persecutes Falun Gong and behaves like hoodlums. Spreading hatred is a trick the CCP has mastered well. We have discovered this several times already. The Chinese Embassy instigates or even directly manipulates from behind the scenes, utilizing Chinese nationalism to easily distort facts.

China Unveils New Generation of Fighter Plane : Industry reports have said the aircraft is unlikely to be used by China's own air force. But Pakistan plans to buy eight of the planes late this year or early next, according to the China News Agency. This week Russian Defense Minister Sergei Invanov said China may participate in Russia's development on a new-generation fighter, but he said it was a "long term" prospect that had to surmount economic and legal obstacles. Biff- sounds like another patriotic flying coffin, this one being export-quality...

China gets energized over ethanol: Even knowing that Brazil heavily uses ethanol in transportation doesn't prepare one for the startling sight of roadside vendors selling beer to motorists during a recent rush hour traffic jam in Sao Paulo.

...And while Brazil's ethanol experience has largely been a pleasant one, surprisingly, that isn't particularly the case at the moment. "Today, the price of alcool is higher than when the flex system started," said Renato Astur, a salesman with Caoa Ford, a car dealership in Sao Paulo. "Now, the people who buy [flex-fuel cars] don't see a big advantage." Partly, this is because ethanol has a lower energy content per liter than gasoline does. Drivers can travel about 10 kilometers per liter of gasoline in Brazil, compared with only 7 per liter of ethanol, Astur said. So the price of alcool has to be 70% of the price of gasoline, or less, for consumers to see a financial advantage; of late, it has been greater than this. And while for the most part the environmental benefits of ethanol are clear, including the fact that it is a minimally toxic fuel, improves air quality where it is widely used, and biodegrades rapidly, Fischer notes that large-scale ethanol production can harm soil because of the need to plant the same crops again and again, depleting ground nutrients

Myanmar's junta goes for the kill: In the past, Myanmar's police have been accused of planting drugs, especially heroin, on young activists and students, then arresting them and sentencing them to several years of imprisonment. These tactics are being complemented with a more subtle strategy aimed at crippling the NLD's ability to operate and recruit, according to the recent police meeting notes. ...Sources close to the SPDC's top leadership say that Than Shwe has apprehensively monitored recent international and regional news from his fortified bunker in Pyinmana, including the street rallies that last month drove Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to abandon his political post, and Nepalese King Gyanendra's recent acquiescence to more violent street protests where demonstrators called for a return to democracy. These events have "rocked the old man, who now more than ever fears a repeat of the mass pro-democracy demonstrations of 1988 which forced Ne Win to stand down", said a close confidant of Than Shwe. In response, the SPDC leader has reportedly ordered police to crack down on even the faintest signs of political ferment.

2006-05-04T13:52:00.000+08:00

The western Pacific may be headed for one of its periodic outbreaks against Chinese: (penned back in 2005) Solomon Islands Minister for National Planning, Fred Fono said the region should be mindful of the influx of Asian people, specifically Chinese coming into the region and taking over businesses that should be operated by locals.
"I shared a lot of support by other regional ministers that they are seeing the trend in their countries,” Mr Fono.
“In the past you hardly see Chinese business people taking over retail and wholesaling businesses but now you travel anywhere in the region you see Chinese businesses operating retail trade stores that are supposed to be operated by local people.”

...

This isn't the first time this sort of ugly rhetoric has appeared in the Pacific, where Chinese expatriates form a large part of the small business community. Like any merchant diaspora, the Chinese often face resentment from locals, which has sometimes found a sympathetic ear in government. In Tonga, for instance, Chinese merchants were banned from one noble's district in 2000, and later that year, the government responded to a wave of anti-Chinese hate crime by deporting 600 shopkeepers.

These days, it seems that the western Pacific is undergoing another wave of economic nativism prompted by slow growth. In some respects, this is being addressed by economic protectionism, such as Vanuatu's proposed bill to restrict a wider category of businesses to citizens. In the Solomons and other places - such as Papua New Guinea, where anti-Chinese riots occurred last October - it's also fueling the perennial resentment of expatriate Chinese businessmen. If the minister's statements are seen as a green light by the citizens and police, things could get ugly fast.

Taiwan's Tacky Tactics In Tarawa - Politician admits receiving US$80,000 The games that Taiwan and China play in competing for recognition by Pacific Islands governments have had some light thrown on them by documents surfacing from Kiribati. The documents and an account by a go-between, Tarawa resident Brian Orme, of how he delivered "bags of cash" from Taiwanese officials to recipient Kiribati politicians reveal how Taiwan buys the loyalty of governments from its enemy, China. ...

While the Taiwanese trade office in Suva (an unofficial embassy since Fiji was intimidated by China against recognising Taiwan) dismissed as "ridiculously untrue" accounts of Taiwan's financial intervention in Kiribati's elections, Dr Tong confirmed that in the course of nine months, from September 2002 to June 2003, Taiwan, through its Suva representative, Fu-Tien Liu, gave him cash totalling US$80,000. He did not handle or receive the money personally. The cash was managed by his campaign manager, an Irishman now naturalised Kiribati citizen, Brian Orme.
At the first exchange, Orme was told there were "no strings attached." But by June 2003, on the eve of the second and final presidential elections in Kiribati, Taiwan through Liu, insisted that Dr Tong signed a memorandum of understanding first before receiving his third and what was to be the final cash payment.
"Recognising the importance of the development of mutual friendship and cooperation between Taiwan and Kiribati and based on the principle of equality, sovereignty and mutual benefit," reads the introduction of a memorandum of understanding (MOU), a copy of which was given to Islands Business by Orme.
It reads: "If the Honourable Dr Harry Tong or his party's candidate wins the presidential election which is scheduled to take place on July 4, 2003 or other designated date, he will ensure the Government of the Republic of Kiribati implements this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and establish full diplomatic relations with Taiwan/ROC at the shortest time possible after the presidential inauguration of the newly elected President of Kiribati."

Chinatowns in Oceania (Wikipedia entry): Biff- not mentioned is that, "As late as 1966, the government of the Solomon Islands debated deporting [all Chinese]." - Ethnic America: A History p. 133, Thomas Sowell).

Solomon Islands (Wikipedia)

On January 2, 1976, the Solomons became self-governing, and independence followed on July 7, 1978, the first post-independence government was elected in August 1980.
Following the 1997 election of Bartholomew Ulufa'alu the political situation in the Solomon's began to deteriorate. Governance was slipping as the performance of the police and other government agencies deteriorated due to ethnic rivalries. The capital of Honiara on Guadalcanal was increasingly populated by migrants from the island of Malaita. In June 2002, an insurrection mounted by militants from the island of Malaita resulted in the brief detention of Ulufa’alu and his subsequent forced resignation. Manasseh Sogavare, leader of the People's Progressive Party, was chosen Prime Minister by a loose coalition of parties. Guadalcanal militants retaliated and sought to drive Malaitan settlers from Guadalcanal, resulting in the closure of a large oil-palm estate and gold mine which were vital to exports. New elections in December 2001 brought Sir Allan Kemakeza into the Prime Minister’s chair with the support of a coalition of parties.
Kemakeza attempted to address the deteriorating law and order situation in the country, but the prevailing atmosphere of lawlessness, widespread extortion, and ineffective police, prompted a formal request by the Solomon Islands Government for outside help. With the country bankrupt and the capital in chaos, the request was unanimously supported in Parliament. In July 2003, Australian and Pacific Island police and troops arrived in the Solomon Islands under the auspices of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). A sizable international security contingent of 2,200 police and troops, led by Australia and New Zealand, and with representatives from about 20 other Pacific nations began arriving the next month under Operation Helpem Fren. Since this time some commentators have considered the country a failed state.[1]

SOUTH PACIFIC:'Fear of Domination Sparked Anti-Chinese Riots': The racial riots have been described as the worst of its kind since independence, 27 years ago. Local Melanesian ethnic groups, that have been fighting each other, have now united to attack Chinese businesses...

There are about 2,000 ethnic Chinese living in Honiara in a population of 50,000, but most of them are naturalised third or fourth generation Solomon Islanders descendents of workers brought in during the colonial era as labourers, cooks and laundry boys for British administrators and plantation owners. Over the years, they worked hard to build the retail stores and other businesses and today dominate both the wholesale and retail sectors.

In neighbouring Fiji, there is a parallel. Ethnic Indians, brought in by British colonials as indentured labourers, mainly to work the sugar plantations, ended up as a major influence in the economic and political life.

Commenting on the riots in an article published in the ‘Solomon Star,' leading civil servant George Manimu, observed that people have resented their leaders giving preferential treatment to foreigners, especially Asians, in such areas as trade, logging, and fisheries making the locals foreigners in their own country. "Business areas, often referred to as reserved for nationals, have also become dominated by Asian entrepreneurs," he said. The ‘'actions of the people (the riots), although criminal, reflects the release of bottled up frustrations and anger that they could not contain any longer"...

"Generally, these Chinese communities are well established in the community and into their third and fourth generations and, most probably don't have direct ties back to China. The issue therefore is the identity and status of people who came from elsewhere, but continue to look Chinese, of course, but they're Pacific islanders of a different descent."

From the Happy Isles of Oceana: Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux (pp 154~163) [copyright 1992]: A definite sense of the world is elsewhere, I wrote in my notebook in Honiara. My first impression was of a place so ramshackle, so poor, so scary, so unexpectedly filthy, that I had begun to understand the theory behind culture shock - something I had never truly experienced in its paralyzing and malignant form. The idea that this miserable looking town could be regarded as the capital city seemed laughable....
It was not only hideous, it was expensive. Nearly all the food in Honiara's stores was imported - from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and America. It is often possible to gauge the prosperity of a place by looking at the central market. Honiara's central market was pathetic - a few old women selling little piles of blackened bananas and wilted leaves and some tiny flyblown fish.
"If I were king, the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons," Jack London wrote in his Pacific travel book, The Cruise of the Snark....
The Solomon Islanders in Honiara were among the scariest looking people I have ever seen in my life - wild hair, huge feet, ripped and ragged clothes, tattoos on their foreheads, ornamental scars all over their faces, wearing broken sunglasses. They loped along in large groups, or else idled near the stores that played American rap music and look for all the world like rappers themselves.
Yet as time passed and I shopped for expedition food and asked directions and bought maps and generally hung around, this impression softened. The town had been a village that the [Second World War] had turned into a capital; it had only existed since the war, less than 50 years. Knowing this, I did not regard the place with less horror, but I came to realize that these wild looking people were friendly and approachable.

It seemed to me grotesque but typical that the wrinkleproof executives in this Japanese company were taking advantage of this poor barefoot country, robbing them of one of their few valuable commodities and staple foods, fish.
The minister said, "Solomon Islanders are too kind." He looked out the window at the patched and broken roofs of Honiara. "But when we lose patience - then, you will see."
"What will I see?"
"We will ask questions."
"Don't ask questions. Threaten them, close them down, freeze their assets" I said. "Or why not demand that they allow you to send a delegation to Japan to start a business there?"
I could just imagine the welcome they would get in Japan, these black bushy-haired Solomon Islanders, with bones in their noses and raised welts and scars of Xs cut into their foreheads and cheeks. Even an unscarred minister like Kemakeza would be treated as though he was subhuman and offered shiny trinkets in return for his country's natural resources of timber and fish. And what laughs of derision would greet the Islanders request to start a business in Nippon: Mi Laik opim kwiktaim kampani bilong bisnis

Solomon Islands A Two Hundred Million Dollar Damage Bill - Leong himself lost a 140 room hotel, the Pacific Casino Hotel and a Casino building, at an estimated cost of US$8.5 million. When interviewed by Pacific Magazine, he declared tearfully, "I don't know whether I 'm going to continue to invest in the country, because I had spent about 60 to 65 million dollars on my investments. That was destroyed in less than 10 hours and now I have nothing left.
"And also I have 600 staff with me and you know what will happen now, they all got no jobs," he continued. "Within the next two weeks they all will suffer and their children will have nothing."
Leong appealed for an end to the destruction. "Please don't harm us anymore," he said. "We are Chinese, but most of us are also Solomon Islanders. We are all friends so please don't harm us anymore, otherwise we will all go home.
"One thing I want to let everybody know is that most or all of the Chinese do not (get) involve(d) in politics," he pointed out. "They are just business people, not trying to control government. Solomon Islands people control the government and parliament."

2006-05-03T09:10:00.000+08:00

The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed - In early September in 1859, telegraph wires suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Rome and Hawaii. The event 144 years ago was three times more powerful than the strongest space storm in modern memory, one that cut power to an entire Canadian province in 1989. A new account of the 1859 event, from research led by Bruce Tsurutani of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, details the most powerful onslaught of solar energy in recorded history.

China triggers alarm on melting glaciers: Dust and sandstorms are a growing problem, particularly in north China, due to deforestation, drought and the environmental depredations of China’s breakneck economic growth. Beijing has approved programs to reclaim land by planting hardy grasses and shrubs on 30 percent of the country's 700,000 square miles of desert by 2050.

2006-05-02T23:44:00.000+08:00

40 years on, the Cultural Revolution comes full circle : Art in China is fiercely tribal and regional. While Shanghai, the glistening financial metropolis, has shiny galleries of contemporary art. Beijing, the grungier political capital, houses its artists' colonies in disused factories and condemned villages, but is where many of the emerging talents live. Factory 798 is trying to help Chinese artists forge an identity. It is as much a community centre as a Hoxton-style hang-out. Mao is everywhere. In Ma Han's work, people issue forth from the Great Helmsman's mouth, while the Zero Field gallery has a sculpture of the young Mao, taken from a famous picture, gazing keenly at the viewer. "The Cultural Revolution was a special time, it never happened anywhere else, it was unique, and it figures in both the young and older artists' work," said Susan Sun from the New Art Warehouse.

Militants Warn China Over Oil in Niger Delta: In a second e-mail, the spokesman, who uses the pseudonym Jomo Gbomo, specifically criticized the Chinese, who last year took a $2.2 billion stake in an oil field in the Niger Delta. Nigeria is a major oil exporter and the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the United States. "We wish to warn the Chinese government and its oil companies to steer well clear of the Niger Delta," Gbomo wrote. "Chinese citizens found in oil installations will be treated as thieves. The Chinese government by investing in stolen crude places its citizens in our line of fire." Biff- welcome to the jungle the US is also entangled in. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. And how is buying something tantamount to stealing? Just as implausable as Brits 'forcing' opium on Chinese buyers in the 19th century. Laughable nonsense... The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has asserted responsibility for other violence in the region, including attacks on oil facilities and the kidnapping this year of several foreign-born oil workers, all of whom have been released unharmed. Biff- and how much ransom was paid? Or would that inconvenience the narrative? The Niger Delta has been a source of political and ethnic unrest for decades. Most residents of the vast region, much of which is reachable only by boats that traverse networks on mangrove swamps, live in intense poverty, while oil facilities in the area earn billions of dollars for foreign companies and the Nigerian government. Biff- Awe shucks... Life isn't fair. Ain't that a surprise. And some things, professional activities, etc. are worth more than others. I'm shocked!

Cambodian Train Ride - Wrenches and rocks are the most evident tools in the yards in Phnom Penh. The train barns are filled with damaged, irreparable cars where workers spend their days playing cards, as there is not enough work, tools, or money to pay them. Biff- Bullshit. I'm supposed to feel sorry for who/whom? What's really going on? Why are things this messed up? Lazy sod. Reporters are often a crude and transparent form of information vermin. Worth it for the photos though. In 2004 China gave Cambodia two new locomotives. They are not in regular use, as they cannot run on the country’s dilapidated tracks. They sit — blue, shiny, new — in a barn in Phnom Penh. Biff- Now we're getting somewhere.

Gary Glitter denies abusing girls : In his first interview since he was convicted of child sex abuse in March, he admitted letting a girl into his bed but said he knew "the line to cross". Biff- nice setup by the reporter to make you think he's a freak. Let's see what he really said according to this very same article: When asked if sleeping with an 11-year-old girl was alright, Glitter said: "I'm a father, so from time to time these things happen. "Your daughter will come into your bed in the night because she's scared or something like that. This happened in this case over here. She was scared of ghosts, so under pressure I said OK." Biff- I have no opinion on Glitter's guilt and I've even hung out with someone I eventually became convinced was a genuine pedophile banging kids in Cambodia. However, the pedophile charge is much the rage these past few years and should be taken with many a grain of salt. Clinton's justice department head, Janet Reno, earned her stars via a couple of high profile child rape cases in Florida, both of which were overthrown on appeal after she moved from Miami to the state justice department. Remember Axel Rose claiming his dad raped him as a child? Remember the 1990's Colorado kindergarten child rape hoax and the other related hoaxes. I have a friend whose wife (his former accountant) ripped him off for US$35 million, claimed indigence and went on welfare, and then got the state to press a charge of child molestation on him (ergo, by being on welfare, she didn't have to pay for the lawyers and was able to keep him busy while she took care of the loot). He lost everything and barely stayed out of jail. No joke...

Bee farmer protests over islands: A South Korean bee farmer has covered his body with nearly 200,000 bees in protest over a territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea. Biff- sounds ominous. Ahn Sang-gyu, known for his bee performances, had tears running down his face as he was stung 200 times. Biff- brings tears even to mine jaded eyes too... tears of mad barking, carpet-chewing laughter... "The honeybee dares to abandon its life when enemies are attempting to attack, to protect its own home. From now on, I hope these bees will contribute to protect our Dokdo", Ahn Sang-Gyu said.

2006-05-02T14:03:00.000+08:00

Stealing Babies for Adoption: "Perhaps 5 to 10 percent of what's given by central, provincial and local governments actually benefits the kids," said a Western aid worker who has worked in Chinese orphanages for a decade and who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing his organization's relationship with the Chinese government.
A former worker at an orphanage in central China said she routinely witnessed local staff members carting off goods donated by aid groups -- medical equipment, blankets, formula. "The adults basically steal out of the mouths of the babies," she said. Biff- How unsurprising. Aid doesn't consistently fail because of the moral failure of individuals, but because aid appeals to and encourages some of the worst in human behavior. It always has and always will. Do the homework and connect the dots and you'll see why.

2006-05-01T23:18:00.000+08:00

6 Smartassed Responses to “Murdering Parents to Sell Their Children” Biff- The comments are more interesting than the lead if you ask me...

Interesting extended debate over at the forum at Pekingduck.org on the Chang/Halliday biography of Mao...

Atlantis in the Himalayas: Norbu practices Bon, Tibet's ancient, non-Buddhist shamanist religion. The cult, which exists in the shadows in modern-day Tibet, subscribes to bloody, consciousness-altering rituals. French orientalist Alexandra David-Néel, a contemporary of Tucci, reports on how monks had themselves locked into chambers with corpses so that they could tear out their tongues -- which were then used as magic potions in battles with demons. ...The murder was followed by a decades-long, bloody religious war. "There is no doubt," says Baumann, "that Buddhism also came into Tibet carrying the sword, and that it erased the indigenous culture in much the same way that the communists later wiped out the Buddhists." Biff- the photospread is the best part of this report

Next Step for Counterfeiters: Faking the Whole Company - Evidence seized in raids on 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan over the past year showed that the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Using the company name, the pirates copied NEC products, and went as far as developing their own range of consumer electronic products — everything from home entertainment centers to MP3 players. They also coordinated manufacturing and distribution, collecting all the proceeds. The actual NEC even received complaints about products — which were of generally good quality — that they did not make or provide with warranties.

A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF JUNG CHANG AND JON HALLIDAY’S BIOGRAPHY -MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY- Biff - a long and involved critique by a group of academics. Worth an extended gander.

Child thieves skirt Turkish law: Pinar's story is like a modern-day version of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a morality tale of a starving child caught in the grinding jaws of poverty and fought over by the forces of good and evil. She is one of 300 children known to be working in organized gangs. Two hundred are from Istanbul and about 100 from Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey. Their parents hand them over to criminals at age four or five in return for money. Some families work in concert with the gangs. Like the gypsy children in the 1978 film King of the Gypsies, the children are trained in pickpocketing and organized mugging.

In Hong Kong, 'democracy will have to wait: HONG KONG - Democrats here, outmaneuvered by Chief Executive Donald Tsang and the central government in Beijing, have painted themselves into a small and increasingly irrelevant corner of Hong Kong's political life. Meanwhile, Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, finds himself a stranger in his own land, as the mainland leadership has struck up a de facto diplomatic dialogue with the more amenable opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT). The two different territories are in two different situations. The common element is a communist leadership in Beijing that seems to have finally discovered a greater finesse and self-confidence in dealing with troublesome opponents. From Beijing's point of view, the Motherland has not looked so embracingly maternal for a long time.

The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk: Even the party itself pays attention to the deluge of public comment. Eager to acquire some legitimacy, but anxious to avoid democracy, it is trying its hand at populism. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said last month that the government should listen “extensively” to views expressed on the internet. With few other ways of assessing the public mood, the internet is indeed a barometer, even though surveys suggest that users are hardly representative of the general population, being mainly young, better educated and male.
In 2003 many internet-users expressed outrage on bulletin boards over the beating to death in jail of just such a young, well-educated man who had been arrested for failing to carry the right identity documents. This led to the scrapping of a decades-old law giving the police sweeping powers to detain anyone suspected of staying without a permit in a place other than his registered home town. Later that year the commuting of a death sentence of a gang boss prompted a similar online furore. The Supreme Court retried the case and ordered his execution. Biff- Pathetic, but most likely true. And yet another example of China copycatting KMT governance during Taiwan's old days of martial law, predating the outbreak of democracy. An evolution which will happen in China for the same reasons and, as such, is just as unstoppable. Not because I'm guilty of wishful thinking, but because, within reason, history repeats itself.

2006-05-01T00:09:00.000+08:00

Little india: The aromatic smell of spices and freshly cooked breads told me I was heading in the right direction, towards the Indian district of Pahurat, better known as Bangkok's Little India. A short walk from Chinatown, it is home to a thriving Indian community made up largely of Hindus and Sikh who have been living there for generations, actually since Pahurat Road was constructed in 1898 and named after Somdet Chaofah Pahurat Maneemai, the son of King Rama V. Biff- comes with a number of good photos

KL denies 'preposterous' report: The Malaysian government yesterday denied the Bangkok Post's report that a group of Thai women are training in Malaysia to replace male insurgents caught by security forces in southern Thailand. The report on Thursday quoted an unnamed Thai military intelligence source as saying that about 50 women are training at a camp in Malaysia's Kelantan state.
The report said the women are mostly ringleaders, wives of separatist sympathisers and hardline students, and that they were sent to the camp for a one-month course on offensive strategies, intelligence gathering and bomb-making.

Reporter shot dead in exercise: The two-day exercise, which ended yesterday, was open to the public to show the capability of soldiers in search-and-rescue operations and their shooting skills. The tragedy occurred when soldiers aimed their M-16 rifles at the spectators and after they pulled the trigger, Sgt Thanarat collapsed to the ground.

China ignores Vatican over bishop

Why Plagiarists Do It - Ambition Often Exceeds Talent: I know of very few examples in which an exceptional writer got caught plagiarizing. Sometimes writers accept jobs or assignments beyond their talents. When the deadline whistle blows, they find themselves facing this cost-benefit quandary: Shall I tell the truth and bail, damaging my career for sure, or shall I steal copy and only risk damaging my career? ...Trudy Lieberman reported in the July/August 1995 Columbia Journalism Review that many journalists caught plagiarizing paid little or no price for their transgressions. Lieberman describes a "circle-the-wagons" mentality in the news business when plagiarism breaks out.

2006-04-29T13:24:00.000+08:00

Han Chinese describe life in Tibet: I was born in Chongqing in south-western China. Tibet was synonymous with mystery and excitement to me before my first trip in 1992. It lived up to my expectations. I was amazed by the stunning beauty, the colour of the autumn leaves. Between 1992 and 1997, I went to Tibet three times, where I made more local friends who are quite simple and honest. I was deeply moved and even shocked by the wonder of Tibetan arts. I met my future Tibetan husband, and we got married in the traditional Tibetan way by the holy lake Namcuo.

When I first visited Lhasa in 1992, dogs seemed to outnumber people on the street, and locals just answered both of nature's calls in the open. Modernisation means a gradual loss of national identity and traditional culture But nowadays you can see the imprint of modernisation everywhere in Lhasa: villages have given way to a large cement plaza; more public toilets have appeared; many migrants have come, and with the Qinghai-Tibetan railway scheduled to open in July, more tourists, businessmen and migrants will come.

...Overall, Tibetans are very different from Han people. I came to accept their lifestyle of relaxing and enjoying everything. Even with only a little money in their pockets, they can still dance and sing happily. Tibet is the land which fits my free spirit best.

Scientists seek sex slavery evidence in Vietnam war: A group of Republic of Korea scientists Thursday wrapped up a study of the war in central Vietnam with focus on the issue of Vietnamese women being forced into sex slavery by Korean troops. In the past few days, the mission met, interviewed, and collected documents in Phu Yen province from many women who were sexually molested or raped by Korean soldiers. They had earlier carried out a similar survey in two other central provinces, Binh Dinh and Quang Ngai.

Chosen Ilbo Piece on Vietnamese Brides Sparks Anger in Vietnam: Anyway, according to Yonhap, once reports of the Chosun piece hit papers in Vietnam, local women’s groups were outraged and local papers were running articles slamming Korea—Yonhap quoted one Vietnamese woman who had married a European (apparently not Gary Glitter) as having written in one Ho Chi Min City paper, “How lucky I am not to have married a Korean.” Locals were upset that Korean men coming to Vietnam to find brides were “commercializing” Vietnamese women, and in particular, women’s groups were outraged that marriage brokers, which are reportedly illegal in Vietnam, were operating in the country to arrange marriages between Vietnamese women and Korean men.

From Mobile Sex to Group Sex, Korean Sex Industry Thrives because of - or despite - Special Law :

21 percent of girls in the red-light districts took up their trade after the Special Law went into effect; Only 0.9 percent of red-light district brothels have shut down since March 2005; 76 percent of johns said they would continue to seek the services of the willow world; The average number of clients a night a red-light district girl sees has decreased from 6.8 to 3.7. Also, the working girls of the red-light district near Pyeongtaek Station have formed an extra-legal union (very interesting but long interview with the union president), which has actually engaged in collective negotiations with the distict’s pimps. The union, though not legally recognized, collects membership dues, has a list of rules and regulations, maintains an office and even runs a website.

...There are other new and unusual prostitution systems popping up. Typical of this new wave is the “mobile massage parlor.” Essentially a modified van, they move around the city center, offering passengers a massage and a lot more. These vans, which leave from Gangnam and pass through Myeongdong and Jongno before heading back to Gangnam, offer literal “Sex and the City” tours where you can get your rocks off while taking in Seoul’s nighttime scenery. One guy in his 30s who has done the tour said, “Having sex in the van was a fantastic experience.”

DPRK view on race and nation in ROK : The article refers to the "recently appearing bizarre pursuits for a 'multinational, multiracial society' in South Korea, which will weaken (kôsehada) the basic characteristics of our nation (minjok)". (Kôsehada means also "to castrate".) It names, ironically enough (but this is DPRK), the "pro-US flunkeyist forces" as the biggest perpretrators in these heinous acts against the purity of the nation. ...I'll reproduce the whole article here for the benefit of visitors from South Korea, where access to KCNA is blocked. (Unfortunately I don't have the time to translate more than a few choice paragraphs, but additional translation contributions are welcome in the comments.) Biff- hit the link for the translation. Another translated article is here:

"Mongolia at 800: Toward Enhanced U.S. and International Support": Among the first of Asian nations to offer condolences post-9/11, Mongolia, despite some internal controversy, afforded swift over flight rights to US aircraft toward Central Asia and committed troops to Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. That participation has emerged more significant than one might assume of small nation support in several instances, namely in Mongolian troops' unique rapport with Hazara forces in Afghanistan (the Hazara being descendents of the Mongolian Golden Horde and identifying with the Mongolians on ethnic lines); in the skilled marksmanship of Mongolian forces in Iraq that prevented a suicide attack; and in the continued rotation of Mongolian troops into the combat theaters, despite some opposition at home that mirrors concerns more broadly across Asia. Former Mongolian President Bagabandi's 2004 visit to Washington came the same week as the Philippines' withdrawal from Iraq, underscoring Mongolia's continued support at a time difficult for the Pentagon. ...What a striking thought that the Mongolian urban aesthetic had appeared so similar to that of North Korea little over a decade ago. Given Mongolia's continued relations with both North and South Korea, historical ethnic linkages, adoption of Korean War orphans from the North and recent quiet facilitation of North Korean refugees, and its low-key, small nation approach, North Korea appears to trust Mongolia in unique ways.

2006-04-28T23:41:00.000+08:00

N. Korean Defectors Often Find Life Less Than Ideal in South : Tim Peters is a Christian activist who works with North Korean arrivals. He says many are shocked to discover that they must now compete to be hired - and that it can be too easy to be fired. In the North, jobs are assigned by the state, and partly because of inadequate electricity and raw materials, many workers actually do little work. "In North Korea, the culture of work is you don't do a darn thing unless you're told to do it," he said. "In South Korea, if you are not doing something, the boss is saying, 'why don't you take initiative, why don't you do that?' Well, you take six months of this in a Korean workplace, and this guy is out on his ear, because he looks like a sloucher, a loafer." An official at the Unification Ministry in Seoul acknowledges 20 to 30 percent of North Korean arrivals are unemployed - compared with less than four percent overall in the South.

The Sellouts, The Reformers and the Revolutionaries: One popular Shanghai blogger, who declined to be identified, compared Zhao to an airline passenger who stands up and curses hijackers. “He makes the other passengers uncomfortable and nervous,” the blogger said. “What he is saying might be right, but it makes the situation unpredictable, and perhaps more dangerous for everyone.” Biff- This paragraph is the only part of the post which caught my eye, but catch it it sure did... haha...

The '1421' Myth Exposed: In his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Menzies claimed Chinese admiral Zheng He had circumnavigated the globe, in the process “discovering” most of the world. Subsequent media coverage has failed to accurately present to the public the large body of evidence that Menzies’ claim is a fabrication, without any basis in fact. The purpose of this website is to present that evidence, and ensure that history is not rewritten by publishers more interested in short-sighted marketing campaigns that ensure their financial security, rather than intellectual integrity and public enlightenment.

Japan's no-name boom: The average stock price on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) rose by about 40% in 2005. Reflecting the increasingly upbeat outlook, the bourse has continued to rally, with the benchmark 225-issue Nikkei stock average reaching its highest level in six years to top the 17,000 mark on March 31, the final day of fiscal 2005. Industrial output in 2005 posted its highest level since 2000. Unemployment declined for the third year in a row in 2005, to 4.4% from 4.7% in 2004 and from 5.4% in 2002. The jobless rate for February stood at 4.1%, the lowest in seven years and seven months. Pay raises offered in this spring's annual wage negotiations are believed to have been higher than last year. ...In the late 1960s, the average life expectancy of Japanese people was 69.2 years for men and 74.7 years for women, compared with 78.6 years for men and 85.6 years for women in 2004. People aged 65 or over accounted for only about 7% of the total population in the late 1960s, but now they make up 20%. The unemployment rate was only 0.7% in 1970.

Myanmar's junta fears US invasion: A high-ranking officer of the Karen National Liberation Army, an armed insurgent group, based in the Thai border town of Mae Sot claims that the SPDC has recently deployed artillery outposts along the entire border with Thailand. Between Mae Sot and Mae Samlep alone there are 10 or more such outposts, he contends. Such artillery is relatively useless against mobile, hit-and-run guerrilla forces operating in the jungle-covered area, and are clearly intended to provide a defensive perimeter against foreign attack from Thailand or the US, or both in cooperation. Many also view the regime's recent establishment of the new bunker-fortified, inland capital in Pyinmana as partly motivated by the junta's fears of a possible US invasion. The leaked Defense Department document confirms that analysis in stark detail.

Japan backs 'patriotic teaching' : Conservative groups have long argued for a revision of the current law, saying pupils should learn national pride as Japan assumes a more active diplomatic and military role on the international stage. Opponents fear the changes might foster a revival of militarism and anger neighbours China and South Korea.

2006-04-27T18:41:00.000+08:00

The New State Capitalists - Governments are getting back into the business of business: Led by China and Russia, state companies are both consolidating control at home and expanding aggressively abroad, in some cases effectively reversing the privatization campaigns first unleashed in the West a quarter century ago. Singapore, Dubai and Venezuela practice variants of the same strategy using a new kind of multinational: aggressive state companies that can leverage their lucrative home-turf advantages to expand overseas.
American suspicion of government ties to business has boiled over repeatedly in recent months, forcing a Chinese state company to abandon its bid for Unocal, and a Dubai state company to give up newly acquired U.S. port facilities. But that has hardly slowed the trend. Just last week, China Construction Bank was compelled to deny Wall Street Journal reports that it is in talks for a 10 percent stake in Bear Stearns, worth up to $4 billion, in what would be China's first big buy on Wall Street.

...Within China, state conglomerates hogged the vast majority of new bank loans given in 2005, for example; of the 1,600 companies listed on the country's domestic stock exchanges today, fewer than 50 are private. Beijing's real agenda since the late 1990s has been "corporatization," or creating state giants that can compete with Western multinationals, says Donald Clarke, an expert on Chinese law at George Washington University. "I don't see the leadership talking about large-scale privatization," says Clarke. "They don't always say what they're planning to do, but if they're not saying that privatization is their plan, we have to take that seriously." Biff- I'm in favor of whatever works. If socialism worked, I'd be for it. But it hasn't in the past and I see little reason for optimism now. The conflation of politics with economics is almost always a fiscal disaster.

'PROGRESSIVE' MEDIA STALLS: 'AIR AMERICA' IN AUDIENCE PLUNGE NYC, 'DAILY KOS' BOOK SELLS ONLY 3,600 COPIES: [NIELSEN claims only 2,062 copies of DAILY KOS have been purchased at the retail level; the rest coming through 'discount' outlets. The NIELSEN figures do include online sales from AMAZON.COM, and others.]

The China Hype: (Biff- From down in the comments) This is highly destabilizing and has emerged particularly in pervasive rural social unrest. I think those who observe the successful urban economic scene in China (as most expatriate “business” types are) are discounting this explosive discontent, mostly because they don’t see it and also because it does not affect their short-term bottom line.
Another concern is that as the economic rationale for CCP’s monopoly on power suffers, there is greater likelihood of emphasizing the “unity” angle, which unfortunately translates to hyper-nationalism and even external aggression to redirect tension away from the ruling elite (somewhat akin to the Saudi model). Biff- The Saudi model... If you're not up on this, it's worth checking into how Saudi Arabia has succeeded and then failed with its own socialist model. Great stuff for perspective on China.

Japan pins hopes on 'speed dates': At one event in central Tokyo, run by a firm called Exeo, 20 men and women cram into a small upstairs room in the hope of finding somebody special. Each pairing gets two minutes, before everyone swaps partners. Some couples seem to hit off instantly, while others are shy and conversation is muted. Biff- Makes sense to me. I usually know within thirty seconds of a phone conversation whether I'll get on with a potential date. Schools that were once full of baby boomers are now being closed down owing to a lack of children - more than 2,000 over the past decade alone.

Surviving a Tibetan gulag: "We had to denounce his Holiness the Dalai Lama and were not allowed to engage in religious practice." This answer is a measure of her commitment to her Buddhist beliefs and helps to explain her behaviour in jail. Ms Sangdrol repeatedly defied the prison authorities, including singing revolutionary songs which were taped and smuggled out of jail, and this earned her ever-extended prison sentences. She said the sacrifice was worth it. "Even when I first went to prison I knew this sort of torture was taking place... (but) I was even angrier that an invader would come to our country and persecute our people," she said, referring to China's invasion in 1950, and its subsequent rule. Biff- Religion and nationalism. Without these two charmers, she might have been out of jail years ago. Worth it she says. Methinks not. Dissidents are often pathological cases. It's often this, not heroism, which makes them stick with the cause when common sense would indicate otherwise. Many people are heroic. It takes much more than that to be a dissident.

The Unpleasant Side of an Unpleasant Business: Officially, China holds Japan responsible for the riots, and associated damage, based on the premise that Tokyo 'provoked Chinese citizens into action' through its own irrisponsible behaviour. As such, Beijing has cited the 'root causes' of the riot as being public anger caused by; Tokyo's highlighting of China's poor record on Human Rights; The continuation of Sino-Japanese territorial and maritime boundary disputes; Tokyo's stance towards Chinese-Taiwan, including its refusal to bar pro-independence leaders from entering Japan; Tokyo's attitude towards disputed areas of Sino-Japanese history ... Unofficially though, the two primary causes of the riots are though to be Tokyo's refusal to ban a controversial school textbook - published by Japan's discredited nationalist minority, and used by a humiliatingly low 0.39 percent of schools - which refuses to accept the full extent of Japan's wartime crimes against China, and an aborted attempt by Tokyo to gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council; a move which would have put Japan on an equal footing to China within the governing body.

Soldiers in North Korea These Days, ‘No’ To Joining The Party, ‘OK’ To Making Money : For men, the military duty is for 10 years, and for women, it is 6~8 years. Between 1987~1998, the military duty was for 13 years, but after that, it was reduced back to 10 years. The reason for such a long military duty has to do with the maintenance of the military force and the physical strength of soldiers. ...North Korea had a hard time reinforcing the military power because of the food difficulty in the 1990s. The students were stunted from lack of food, and some became “Kotjebi(begging children)” and wandered around, which caused their physical strength to remarkably reduce. Men used to have to be taller than 148cm and heavier than 48kg, but now they only have to be 145cm and 40kg.

2006-04-26T12:27:00.000+08:00

That’s trouble in Shanghai.: Things in China have certainly improved in the last few years, but as we’ve said before – don’t be taken in by the shiny new skyscrapers and the modern offices. Beneath the surface lurk the same corruption, xenophobia, and dishonesty that have poisoned the business environment here for centuries. While it will never go away completely, you can take actions to safeguard your interests. Start off by finding partners your can rely on. If you are told that something is illegal but that there is a way around it, be very wary. And never forget that it is not how much you earn that counts – but how much you keep. One of the first conversations you should have with your team of consultants and advisors is about exit strategy.

That's China: After seven years building up a magazine empire in China, I (Mark Kitto) had it stolen by the state. I lived in the grey zone that is China's media business and, despite my commitment to the country, paid a high price. ...[A big US publisher commissioned a book by Mark Kitto. After the manuscript had been edited, the publisher dropped it for fear of harming its Chinese interests. Those interests fall under the authority of the State Information Council]

China Business Definitions (April 1 edition) - SCM: Special Chinese Method. What all young, male mainland Chinese seem to believe exists to solve any conceivable business challenge. Note: Unless you are cooking, writing, or bribing local officials, THERE IS NO SPECIAL CHINESE METHOD!! Or rather there is, but it will not result in an outcome that you consider to be successful or effective. If there really were SCMs that worked, you wouldn’t be here, now would you? SCMs are invariably simple, require little pre-planning but much post-disaster management, and usually involve handing over money or valuable equipment to an employee’s classmate’s friend’s neighbor’s colleague’s son. Would you really be surprised to hear that it never, ever works?

鄭義:曹長青《和劉賓雁分道揚鑣》斷章取義--曹文歪曲電視採訪《走出千年泥濘》: 大多數作家並不擅長於邏輯嚴密的政治哲學式表達。劉賓雁亦然。他的浪漫氣質和理想主義，的確也使他的許多政治表述有欠明朗清晰。這是不應苛求的。

Look to the future of China — not just its past.: Too much ink has been devoted to comparisons of “traditional Chinese methods” vs. “Western methods” of doing business. The airport newsstand best-sellers and glossy news weeklies are packed with admonishments to “preserve face” and “build relationships” as though all Western business travelers were Ming-dynasty emissaries waiting for a high-ranking eunuch to take our message to the Inner Court. Local Chinese writers have jumped on the bandwagon, poking fun at the clueless westerners blundering towards failure in China because they don’t understand the local culture.
Reality check 1: Western MNCs are doing well here, because this is what they do. They are multinational. They adjust to new cultures and new environments. Their brand power in China has been growing fast and deep. They hire the best local talent, pay the highest salaries, and invest the most. They have no culture, no beliefs, and no predispositions. They are machines. Biff- Machines... If only people could try to be more like machines. They'd be all that more intelligent.

Is China Going Green, Part VIII? -- Well The Wall Street Journal Says It Is So You'd Better Believe It: Moves by Plantronics to go beyond basic environmental requirements helped ensure that local authorities became very enthusiastic for this project, said Terry Walters, the company's senior vice president of operations. "They were in our corner the whole time, fighting for us to get through the approval process, and fast."
We have found the same thing in our China work for foreign companies, particularly in the last few months. Registering a company to do business in China is often easier if the company you are seeking to register does not pollute or goes to great lengths to minimize pollutants.

China is Expensive -- NOT. Go Second Tier and Life Will Be Good: These "China is getting expensive stories" make the mistake of equating Shanghai and Beijing with all of China, effectively ignoring more than a billion people, whose wages are lower than those in China's ex-pat centers. The story I would be writing is how western companies are coming to realize there is more to China than just Shanghai and Beijing, and how they are beginning to consider a greater number of factors in deciding where to locate within China.
I am seeing more western companies interested in starting their China operations in cities outside the typical favorites like Shanghai, Gaungzho, Beijing, and Shenzhen. I also am hearing more talk from companies already in those cities about expanding elsewhere, with reasons as varied as the companies themselves. Some are interested in regional or city tax incentives. Some are thinking about logistics. Some want greater exposure to China's internal market. Some just want to be somewhere quieter and/or less polluted. And yes, some want to be where wages are lower or where the workforce they need is more accessible.

Sujiatun: Why I still believe - Over the last week, the Communists rolled out the big gun in their propaganda campaign against the charges of organ harvesting in Sujiatun: the U.S. State Department. To be accurate, the Department rolled itself out, and to be fair, it merely stated it had not found evidence of Falun Gong organ-harvesting. Still, it was enough to sow some doubt in the Sujiatun accounts throughout the blogosphere.

2006-04-25T18:16:00.000+08:00

China Hype, Part 4: All this, you heard from me and others before. Now comes the assessment to which I would like everyone to pay a great deal of attention: "China sells little to the United States that Americans couldn’t buy for comparable prices and quality from India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. China, however, could not find a market anywhere near the size of that in America. Privately and candidly, Chinese scholars acknowledge this." ...Despite protectionist concerns in the U.S. that the manufacturing base is relocating to China, the fact is that the U.S. as the largest, richest buyer holds the leverage in the relationship, not China. China isn’t the only low-cost manufacturer available (in fact, even Chinese businessmen are moving to Vietnam for lower cost labor).

This is no rah-rah revolt: There is something refreshingly old-fashioned taking place in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal: a genuine revolution. Biff- since when has a revolution not ended in massacre? The exception which proves that rule of thumb is the US revolution, which did not uproot the wealthy and instead preserved the spirit of the existing political and judicial structures. Revolutions typically throw out the existing wealthy class (and the political and judicial structures) and replace it with another more earthy class, closer to the spirit of the people and thus better equipped for demagoguery and slaughter. Nepal's upper-caste Hindu rulers have institutionalised ancient customs to preserve their own privileges. Only last year was the custom of locking up menstruating women in cowsheds declared illegal. Biff- Down in the comments I was happy to find the following: Being a good Pakistani Muslim Tariq Ali sees upper caste Hindu conspiracies too easily. The King of Nepal and the very small circle supporting his autocratic rule do not constitute Nepal's entire upper castes. Most of them, especially the highest caste, the Brahmins, are out on the street demonstrating against him. This includes most of the leaders of the three main parliamentary political parties. This is the kind of small detail that Mr. Ali, the putative author of fiction, might wish to take on board when pretending to write political comment.

Solomons MP faces riot charge The court heard that Mr Dausabea, 46, told a crowd outside parliament last Tuesday, when Snyder Rini was elected prime minister: "We lost, you people go do what you like now." Later that same day, Mr Dausabea allegedly told a security guard at the Honiara Hotel, which is owned by Thomas Chan, the Chinese president of Mr Rini's political party: "You wait for me, I'm coming back to burn the Honiara Hotel." ...State media in China say more than 300 Chinese nationals have now arrived back in the south of the country after being evacuated from Honiara after the riots.

World Bank accused over malaria: They quote the bank saying that it reduced deaths from malaria in the Indian states of Gujarat by 58%, Maharashtra by 98% and Rajasthan by 79%. The authors say they doubted malaria could be reduced so markedly in such a short time and requested and obtained official statistics from India's own national malaria programme. According to India's Directorate of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, deaths from malaria rose in all three states in the 2002-3 period in question. "Because we were refused access to the original data sources, we cannot discern the cause of the bank's many statistical errors and particularly whether those errors arise from unintentional mistakes or from intentional data falsification or fabrication," the authors say.

In pictures: Tibetan nomads - Jigme is the head of an ethnic Tibetan family based in Sichuan province, western China. He and his family move camp throughout the year, in order to take advantage of the changing resources. They spend up to two months in one place. Approximately 40% of the ethnic Tibetan population is nomadic or semi-nomadic. ..."We offer butter and yoghurt to the lama. He hasn't gone to town for years so doesn't have much use for paper money."

2006-04-24T17:25:00.000+08:00

The risks and social costs of Taiwan-China economic and trade ties(1): Hao last year defected to Australia. His job was originally to supervise Falun Gong members, but later on he was responsible for supervising Taiwanese businesspeople. As soon as a Taiwanese businessman entered China, Hao’s office would monitor the individual’s every move, including when it would forcibly appropriate the person’s assets. The Chinese had an established procedure for everything. That’s why Kao says that “entrapping Taiwanese businesspeople” is China’s established policy. It is a fact. ... Hao said at a public hearing in the Legislative Yuan on December 16, 2005 how he enticed Taiwanese businesspeople into evading taxes and visiting prostitutes and how he went to catch them later on when necessary. Then again he rescued them, of course, but not without forcing a concession – that they return to Taiwan as spies. At the hearing, Hao also mentioned how China controls Taiwan’s media.

2006-04-24T14:25:00.000+08:00

The risks and social costs of Taiwan-China economic and trade ties(1): Presently many Taiwanese businesspeople get burned (in China), yet Taiwan’s media report very little about it. We can get a glimpse of the plight of Taiwanese businesspeople from the books “Escaping from Mainland China” by Lin Ji-sheng and William Kao’s “The Real Story of China’s Judicial Persecution of Taiwanese Businesspeople.“ ... Chinese society no longer has any ethics after going through the campaign to “Destroy the Four Olds,” (a campaign instigated by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution to destroy old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits). One result is that only 15 percent of all contracts are fully carried out. The lack of trust between people in Chinese society has already reached such dimensions that people even “cheat people they’re familiar with.” “Cheating familiar people” is an expression that has been brought up by Zheng Yefu, a professor in Beijing University’s Sociology Department. He divides trust into three levels... Biff- whatever caused the ethical collapse, I doubt it was commie campaigns. The same lack of character was in spades in Taiwan just ten years ago. As it has been in parts of NY City and other urban areas for time immemorial.

Drab North Korea is a hot ticket: Moreover, independent mingling with the masses isn't permitted. Tours are highly choreographed with two North Korean guides assigned to foreign travel groups. ("One explanation is that they're watching each other," Keats says.) Travel is arranged through a government agency (akin to the former Soviet Intourist), and Americans are charged more than other foreigners. At Geographic Expeditions in San Francisco, where two departures quickly sold out prompting them to add a third, John Sugnet has warned clients that hot water might be limited, plumbing could be problematic, the schedule will be rigorous and "flexibility and a sense of humor are essential."

Cspan Video: Bill Gertz, Defense & National Security Reporter for The Washington Times, discusses the U.S. military policy towards Asia. Biff- some interesting emerging stuff about Guam and defending Taiwan against China. Long-range bomber groups, new nuclear subs, double-teaming aircraft carrier crews, etc.

Cspan Video: Bill Gertz, Author of "Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies," and Defense and National Security Reporter for the Washington Times, discusses his book and other topics.

Security high at Solomons meeting: The election of Snyder Rini as prime minister last Tuesday triggered riots over claims that either China or Taiwan had paid lawmakers to vote for him. ...Solomon Island Police Commissioner Shane Castles told reporters before the session began that "Parliament House will be locked down, and people will not be allowed within a stone's throwing distance".

Crimes and Motives: Minucci has told the Daily News’s Denis Hamill in a jailhouse interview: “I didn’t say ‘n---er’ with an ‘er.’ But ‘n---a’ with an ‘a’ at the end. There’s a very big difference in the hip-hop world that I come from . . . ‘What up, n---a’ is like saying, ‘What’s up, pal?’” To bolster his argument, Minucci notes that he grew up in mostly black East New York: “I went to Junior High School 226, where I was the only Italian in a school of 2,000 mostly African-American kids. All of my friends . . . were black. All of them. . . . And we always called each other ‘n---a’ all the time.”

Facing Down Iran: The bad cop/worse cop routine the mullahs and their hothead President Ahmadinejad are playing in this period of alleged negotiation over Iran’s nuclear program is the best indication of how all negotiations with Iran will go once they’re ready to fly. This is the nuclear version of the NRA bumper sticker: “Guns Don’t Kill People. People Kill People.” Nukes don’t nuke nations. Nations nuke nations. When the Argentine junta seized British sovereign territory in the Falklands, the generals knew that the United Kingdom was a nuclear power, but they also knew that under no conceivable scenario would Her Majesty’s Government drop the big one on Buenos Aires. The Argie generals were able to assume decency on the part of the enemy, which is a useful thing to be able to do. ...As Communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Africa and south Asia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay who’d have been “Marxist fantasists” a generation or two back are now Islamists: it’s the ideology du jour.

2006-04-23T10:39:00.000+08:00

Dr. Strangegun or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the fisking - After nearly two hours at the show, Nunziato headed out, with one question. "Why can't all of the dealers be like him?" Nunziato said, referring to Tomes. "I'm not saying ban gun shows. I'm saying make all the people there like Pop's. There would at least be some paperwork." Paperwork: the weapon of choice for Big Brothers everywhere. As he left, a man with a shotgun stood outside the show, smoking a cigarette. He was looking for a sale. In conclusion, the moral of the story is: Guns don't kill people. Gun shows do.

2006-04-23T00:10:00.000+08:00

Injuries among Native Americans: Fact Sheet Injuries are the leading cause of death for Native Americans ages 1 to 44 and the third leading cause of death overall (CDC 2003). Injuries and violence account for 75% of all deaths among Native Americans ages 1 to 19 (Wallace 2000). Native Americans 19 years and younger are at greater risk of preventable injury-related deaths than others in the same age group in the United States. Compared with blacks and whites, this group had the highest injury-related death rates for motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian events, and suicide. Rates for these causes were two to three times greater than rates for whites the same age.

Letter from China: Is it a ‘peaceful rise’? U.S. shouldn’t bet on it : The devil, as they say, is in the details, which is why one might hope for more candor from the country’s leaders, both toward the outside world and toward their own people. They are still spoon-fed a saccharine-laced and ultimately dangerous form of history that paints their China as the eternal innocent: happily self-contained and fair and courtly toward others. ...One senses Beijing is serious about wanting to avoid disastrous wars and ruinous arms races. Its challenge, instead, is to another key source of American power, the international system.

Why Washington Can't Speak Chinese: When I was the Henry Kissinger Scholar at the Library of Congress two years ago, I was both amused and appalled to learn that most China policy analysts in Washington were still focused on Western political concerns such as how to democratize China or old-fashioned security issues such as how to strike a balance of power within Asia. As a result, I frequently encountered books and articles about the region with sensationalistic and melodramatic titles, such as "Taming the Red Dragon." Aaron L. Friedberg, who later was Vice President Cheney's deputy national security adviser, served up such works as "The Struggle for Mastery in Asia." ...Zheng's Peaceful Rise has met strong resistance from the Chinese Foreign Ministry as well as the People's Liberation Army. The former criticizes the effort as a self-indulgent pipe dream, while the latter attacks it for tying the military's hands in case Taiwan must be dealt with by force. ...The Iraq war showed two sides of the West -- one Greek (Europe) and the other Roman (the United States). With the two increasingly split, China is finding space to restore its tradition, power and role in the world.

A Rational Choice (Singapore): When one of Mr Lee senior's young inquisitioners suggested that a bit more freedom of expression would make the country stronger, he retorted: “You mean to tell me that what is happening in Thailand and the Philippines is binding the people, building the nation?”

Riots highlight Chinese tensions: "People have not been happy with the Chinese here, but I think they are beginning to realise how much they have contributed to our country. Now the shops are destroyed and the Chinese are leaving, I think they may come to regret it."

Nude offer 'causes havoc' in Indonesia She also lashed out at organisations such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), which is one of her biggest critics. 'Being a personality, I know my every movement is being monitored. 'The FPI is very extreme. They need to know that Indonesia is not just a Muslim country. 'It is a democratic country with Hindus and Christians as well,' ...Inul is indeed a beacon for controversy since she emerged on the dangdut scene in 2003. Dangdut is a blend of Indian, Arab and Indonesian folk-pop music, popular in the 1950s and 1960s in Indonesia and Malaysia. It has a reputation of being the music of the working class with bawdy lyrics and suggestive dance moves. She enjoys such popularity that Indonesian political parties tried to make her endorse them in the 2004 elections.

2006-04-21T23:25:00.000+08:00

胡宗南爭議雙方談不攏: 「毛」書英文版去年六月在英上市，書中提及胡宗南的部分不過幾段文字，卻因張戎指他「可能是紅色代理人」，引發胡後人與歷史學者的強烈質疑。張戎被質疑「缺乏足夠證據」，因此決定在中文版提出更多證據，胡宗南所占篇幅增為八頁，反倒惹來更大風波。An interesting element in this jousting is that the local view maintains that the reader must be protected from authors with incorrect information. This would seem intuitively appropriate, but the view back home is in fact that the reader fends for himself. Free speech ensures that any nonsense, libelous or otherwise, can be printed. I.e. the onus is on the reader to employ discretion. The Chinese perspective remains steeped in decadent tradition whereby academics have a default contempt for the hoi-polloi which must be protected from itself. I.e. Paternalism in action. Lefties at home would approve heartily while denying that protecting the common man from himself encourages dependence and bovine stupidity in Joe Sixpack (thus compounding the original problem).

Daggers drawn over a dot on the map: Talking to Christian leaders at a prayer breakfast, he charged that "some people" were "claiming territorial rights to former colonies that were once acquired through a war of aggression".

Comics stoke Japan-Korea tension: While some of these statements may contain elements of truth, the authors also make more spurious claims. In one chapter, the book says Japanese colonization resulted in improved economic conditions for Koreans. It also says the Korean government invited the Japanese to colonize their country, so that Koreans might become enlightened by their more Westernized and modern Japanese neighbors. Biff- Japanese colonization to the best of my knowledge did indeed improve the country. Amongst other things, the Japanese occupation terminated the indigenous caste system plus traditional slavery which held above 5% of the population in cradle to grave bondage. As to Koreans inviting the Japanese in, I have no comment. But don't be quick to judge. Stranger things have happened.

畫在紙上的「強國夢」——朔天運河 : 「朔天運河」也稱南水北調大西線計劃，這個計劃的基礎是「整個西藏高原就是一座天然的大水庫」。實際上，西藏的絕大部分地區屬半乾旱——少水帶和半濕潤過渡帶，只有藏南九萬多平方公里是中國和世界的最豐水帶。但是這片土地在麥克馬洪線以南，在印度實際控制下。根據解決中印邊界問題的原則，「朔天運河」計劃只是一個永遠不能實現的「強國夢」。古人云：一著不慎，全局皆輸。

Indonesia: Playboy and hardcore violence - The debut of Playboy Indonesia this month unfolded predictably. The magazine flew off the shelves despite its premium price of Rp39,000 (US$4.35). Religious leaders condemned the publication as immoral, despite its total lack of pictures of naked women.

English villages and hype: First, the villages are not real. The buildings are simulations of banks, post offices, airline offices and the like, and the interactions are simulations: The "residents" of the English village in Korea are actually English teachers trained to play different roles, such as policemen (an ad for English teachers for the Seoul English village mentions that the teachers will also be trained to act as doctors).

2006-04-21T03:11:00.000+08:00

I'm putting these here so I have some sort of record of my mutterings. Just some rubbish I posted at Pekingduck.org

I won't comment directly on this Michelle Malkin kerfuffle, suffice to say when it comes to US politics you seem profoundly unreliable. Even if you agreed with any of my political views, I suspect it would still be for the wrong reasons. And if you hated Kerry, you'd be just as barking mad as you are today. And that's the problem. Hate. You're full of it at such times as these. You really love to hate. Makes you feel alive. Well, of course it has the same invigorating effect on many of the rest of us... haha... but as good as it may feel and sound to the ear, it ain't at all persuasive in the written form. Your material on China, where you seem fortunately to have invested less emotional capital, is that much more palatable. When the day comes that you don't give half a damn, you'll be at your peak. Because then presumably you'll be capable of the analytical clarity that comes with detachment. The distinction between humans and other mammals is not to be found in our emotional palette, which I presume is shared with them more or less equally, but in our capacity to reign in our emotions and aspire to detachment. Once you get there, perhaps you can bring in readers via wit. After all, I'm not suggesting readers will come without some sort of emotional pull. They surely won't. But venting hatred and playing at the shooting of fish in barrels? It's just so unpersuasive, unsporting, and... for me... just plain too easy. There's no challenge in it. It ought to bore you by now. It's not a good sign that you haven't tired of this nonsense yet.

Posted by: Biff Cappuccino at April 20, 2006 12:00 PM

Ivan: If you're a fan of Lincoln, you must find it ironic that Lincoln shared so many things in common with George W. Bush. Lincoln was hated in the East for being a rural bumpkin, for starting an illegal war, for throwing heaps of money around on patronage projects, for his hostility to the press (didn't Lincoln jail in excess of a hundred newspaper editors?), for overseeing Sherman's March on Atlanta which was the 19th century equivalent of the bombing of Dresden. Several of Lincoln's generals had a withering contempt for the Great Emancipator; General McClellan in particular if memory serves. A number of Lincoln's generals were political appointees, business hacks who figured they were owed a command. And it took Lincoln more than two years to get the Civil War on the right track (when he discovered Grant, whose nickname was The Butcher. The confederates didn't give him that name. His own troops did. For butchering them in senseless battles. Grant, as you'll remember, praised himself for only reading one book on strategy and learning nothing from it.) And I recall reading somewhere that during battle, troops fleeing were shot on the spot by their own men. The tactic was to place twelve men with shooting irons (i.e. I don't remember what they shot with), behind which walked one man with a revolver and orders to shoot the first man who tried to run. I have the feeling this was the official policy on both sides, after which discipline improved and some serious killing and maiming got done.

You'll also remember that many members of the northern congress were constantly in a state of panic and certain the north would lose. They wanted to end the Civil War by negotiating a truce with the Confederates as late as 1863 I believe (it's late here and I can't be bothered to verify the date). And you'll also remember that most everybody who could dodge fighting in the Civil War did via paying for proxies to fight in their place. A lot of chickenhawks then too.

What a surprise that history repeats itself... Fancy that. I find few things more depressing than being informed solemnly that the current average president is worse than other average presidents.

I am no fan of W. And no fan of Clinton. And, for that matter, I don't degrade myself by admiring anyone from afar. All the while, familiarity breeds contempt. What to do? haha...

2006-04-20T13:55:00.000+08:00

China, Taiwan and the Solomon Islands riots: Many Chinese-owned businesses have been burnt to the ground, and Australian troops had to be called in to control riots in the Solomon Islands. Meanwhile, I am reading a slew of different and sometimes contradictory stories about what ignited the conflict, and while I still can't sort it out, China and Taiwan are the keywords that keep popping up. Biff- I left the following comment at Pekingduck.org (a site well worth visiting): -- Perhaps you've already read Amy Chua's book, "World on Fire : How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability" Her Chinese aunt was murdered and ripped off by the hired help in the Philippines. The police report only listed 'revenge' as the motive and the cops refused to pursue the case out of sympathy for the killer. Minorities hated for their financial savvy naturally includes the Chinese in SE Asia, but also Lebanese in West Africa, Ibo in Nigeria, Kikuyu in Kenya, etc. You get the picture. Yesteryear's global bogeyman was the Jew. Today it's the American. Apparently in the Solomons (frighteningly scary places according to both Jack London and Paul Theroux) the bogeyman is Chinese. And doesn't Fiji suffer from major bad blood between its Melanesian Mormons and Indian Hindus. Fiji sounds like comedy on the face of it, but it's actually a pretty serious business I gather...

China 'selling prisoners' organs': Professor Wigmore described this as quite widespread and growing. He and his colleagues, he said, had all seen cases of British patients who had considered going to China for transplants. He really hoped, he added, that people would think very hard about whether they should. Biff- Dying people ain't going to be thinking hard about this. Secrecy surrounding executions in China has always made it difficult to gather facts. Biff- So is this actually taking place? Or is this more hype safely sold to papers by reporters who know that no credible rebuttal will emerge from authorities. Think back to Iraq and all the previously credible hype which has since been refuted. How eagerly do you wish to believe?

BBC: Mount Merapi smoulders: Farmers on the Indonesian island of Java are silhouetted against volcanic Mount Merapi, which has recently begun spewing smoke and ash... Seventy-nine-year old Marijan is the "gatekeeper" of Mount Merapi - appointed by the nearby king to mediate with the spirits of the mountain. Biff- Sounds like something from J.R.R. Tolkien unless you remember the 1998 financial crisis. Local travelers were murdered across Java because they were suspected of being the demons, temporarily in human form, who were responsible for the crisis. Authentically dangerous.

Capital sees its population ageing: Experts define an ageing society as one with more than 7 per cent of its population aged above 65. A survey found Beijing has 1.66 million residents over 65, making up 10.8 per cent of the permanent population.

新丐幫》穿著整齊乞討兼打劫: Biff- Comic crime in which a beggar with fake impediments is so flush with the thought of stealing a real beggars takings, that he fails to notice the photographer beside him taking pictures while he stealthily commits his crime. A truely homeric achievement of The Simpsons proportions.

The Minister of Minstrelsy: But while Peterson's strident style may be unique, with his extremist politics he is merely playing the role of front man for a murky, well-funded network of white nationalist activists and right-wing Beltway operatives. By deploying Peterson to gatherings like the Heritage event and into the media, this coterie of conservatives have been able to apply a bold veneer of blackness over the brand of bigotry they find increasingly inconvenient to espouse on their own. Biff- What's a left-wing rant without a conspiracy theory and a grab-bag of assorted evil-doers? The more the far-left throws stones at the far-right, the more they mimic each other's values and rhetoric.

Professor Disrupts Rev. Peterson’s Speech at University of Texas at San Antonio: Wary of potential trouble, guards hovered around Jesse. A black student approached him asking, “Why do you say you hate black people? (Of course he never said that). Another asked, “Why do you say you’re not black?” (Rev. Peterson never said he’s not black, he said he’s not an African American). Biff- Just another day on campus enjoying the freedom to be heterodox and speak one's mind. I've been saying for years that not one person in a hundred really believes in free speech until they've been actively persuaded. With most people, when under fire, the default position is completely at odds with the expressed position.

2006-04-19T11:53:00.000+08:00

No, I do not have change : It’s ok, you have a calculator for that purpose. F.Y.I. it can do math, as well as display numbers to show me the price, which you poke into it and point mutely at the screen like some village idiot. You might have noticed that I just conducted the first part of the transaction in your native tongue — believe it or not, I learned the numbers too. Go on, test me.

The Hidden Buddhist Threat in our Midst:

Canadians in a Nutshell: In a classified ad in KScene, a free biweekly magazine, World Class describes itself as a group that "brings together all nationalities to discuss world issues and break down cultural barriers and prejudices."... When contacted by a Korea Herald reporter by e-mail, the organizer of the group, Bernard Carleton, elaborated further, "The thing is, CANADIANS ARE SCUM! They are self-loving, welfare supporting, over taxing, work ethic hating scum!!! They are not welcome in our group." Biff- hahaha....

Why the Chinese love Seattle: Starbucks in January won a trademark lawsuit against a Chinese company that had used its name and logo, translated into Chinese, without the Seattle company's permission. A court ordered the Shanghai Xing-Bake Coffee shop to pay Starbucks 500,000 yuan ($62,500) in damages (see A victory for Starbucks in trademark war, January 20). ...Boeing said it had officially named the series the Boeing 787, adding the numeral 8 because of its significance in Asia as a symbol of prosperity. (However, the 787 was the next number in the Boeing series, the last aircraft being a 777.) The first Chinese Boeing 787s should be in service by the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

Court comes down hard on sex-starved 76-year-old: he said, he wished to live with his girlfriend, who is in her 40s and able to offer him a more fulfilling relationship. The newspaper reported that the court rejected the request, arguing that the love tying the couple together, although platonic, must be strong and stable as they had managed to remain married for half a century. Biff- failing to see morality as a social governing system, the court views a traditional moral lifestyle as more valuable than one which is productive in today's world. Traditions are always cute when they're making a living Third World hell out of someone else's life. That's what poverty tourism in the Third World is all about.

In his essay Marrakesh, Orwell wrote: In a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human beings. It takes in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm-tree and the distant mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less interesting to look at. (Biff - That at least, has changed) It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas (Biff- in the UK I presume). But where the human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed. What does Morocco mean to a Frenchman? An orange-grove or a job in government service. Or to an Englishman? Camels, castles, palm-trees, Foreign Legionnaires, brass trays and bandits. One could probably live here for years without noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an endless, back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded soil.
--

Chinese student killing accused appears in NZ court: One of the accused is charged with murdering Wan, 19, who was found in a suitcase dumped in Auckland's Waitemata Harbor on Good Friday. He is also charged with kidnapping. The second man is accused of being an accessory, after Wan's death.

Dokdo Riders. Yeah. THAT’S The Ticket! : I personally agree that the rocks in question should be recognized as belonging to Korea. As far as I am concerned, Dokdo is Korean territory. However, I think that many people, including the Dokdo Riders, are trying to make their point in exactly the wrong way. Let’s check in the the Dokdo Riders again. Let’s see how they have been spending their time during their around-the-world vacation crusade to spread the word about Dokdo to the people of Earth. Biff- Too funny. It's mostly photographs of student clowns going through the motions of working up sympathy for a nationalist cause overseas. Doomed? Not for them it ain't. Not when it's a junket. Yet another window on activist scamming...

The State of Education in Korea: One other thing I could never get them to do was to ask questions. Finally , a student explained it to me: "If I ask you a question during the lecture, afterwards everybody will be telling me, 'What are you wasting our time for in the class? We're trying to learn something. And you're stopping him by asking a question.'" It was kind of a one-upmanship, where nobody knows what's going on, and they'd put the other on down as if they did know. They all fake that they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude, acting as if it's not confusing at all, telling him that he's wasting their time. Biff- Fascinating, fascinating post. I've threatened my Taiwanese wife with divorce on several occasions in an effort to get her to ask questions. This sort of socially-approved culturally-generated stupidity is rampant in the developing world. A deliberate form of ignorance cultivated in the nation's best and brightest which also leads to that other pillar of the developing world: the conspiracy theory. The only way to move into the First World is via the slow process of uprooting this sort of degeneracy, primarily, I suspect by virtue of hard work and economic surplus which in turn engenders wealth, leisure, and that form of self-esteem shunned and feared by folks who wear their hearts on their sleeves: confidence.

2006-04-18T17:26:00.000+08:00

Back to Iraq Part V - By Force of Sheer Will: Americans are happy to see that Northern Iraq is a normal, reasonably prosperous place. Sean even took pictures of the laser scanner in the checkout line. We met two American soldiers in front of the store. They sat on a park bench outside. Iraqi Kurdistan is perfectly safe, so they did not carry guns. They did not wear body armor or helmets. ...“The Kurds are farther along right now,” Mark said. “Some of the Arabs still don’t get the freedom and democracy thing like the Kurds do. I just want to say to them: Haven’t you seen what it’s like in the north? What, exactly, is it that you’re not understanding?” I don't know central or southern Iraq. I have never been there. An article just appeared, though, at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting about the economic divide on each side of the Kurdistan line. As it turns out, huge numbers of Arab laborers are heading north where they can make more money and live in a more secure environment. They're taking low-end jobs that the Kurds of Iraq no longer want. Arab Iraq is now to Kurdish Iraq what Mexico is to the United States. Biff- Like many bl0whards over here, I too have insufficient information. But I don't pretend to know what's going on over there. On the other hand, having spent six months in Belfast in 1971, I've never labored under any delusions about freedom-fighters so-called. How many Martin Luther King's did the US produce this past century? Well that's about how many you can expect to find in Iraq leading the masses to a better place. The rest are opportunists and mediocre con-artists. Rely on it.

Korean Defense Firms Target Latin America:

South Korea's New English Town : Imagine going for a stroll down the street of any quaint little English town, with its characteristic pubs, restaurants and red brick terraces and, as in every U.K. town or village, everybody says hello to you in English. But just then, you notice something typically uncharacteristic, reels of barb wire and warning signs in the distance reading "landmines nearby." ... The US$90 million project follows in the footsteps of Ansan Camp that opened in August, 2004, also designed to dissuade Korean parents from sending their children abroad to learn English, but Paju camp resembles more of a town than a language learning center. Biff- a money saver, or a xenophobic paradigm for foreign language acquisition? How about an improved petting zoo, one with robots installed for better public safety; the robots do the petting.

More South Koreans Migrating to China : For decades, South Korea's out-migration rate has been among the highest in the world. In the 1960s, Koreans left their impoverished homeland for wealthy countries, especially the United States and Germany. Korean migrants dreamed they could get rich in those societies, or at least they could give their children a better future. Many gave up positions of high social status in South Korea as lawyers or professors, to enter American factories or dry cleaners.

China turning to artificial rain to clear Beijing air after choking dust storm

Net-savvy easily evade China's censors: ``Real film fans in China never have any expectation from movie theaters. Most movies that show here are rubbish,'' said Liu Qiwen, a 23-year-old movie buff and senior at Nankai University in the industrial city of Tianjin. ``I can find almost any movie I like, especially the latest ones. Old movies can be a little harder to dig up, but there is always a way.'' Biff- as always, have to love that mainland gusto... Call me prejudiced, but I have fond memories of two situations in which Chinese bystanders got involved in attempted murders. Plus another situation in the US when the Chinese restaurant owner beside me on a Greyhound out of Chicago got up to brawl with the much larger driver until I spoke up and defused the scene. Crudity I dislike, chutzpah on the other hand... If only the Taiwanese could demonstrate the same in significant numbers...

China prisoners' supporters look to Bush : Human rights activists say prisoner releases have declined since Hu became China's leader in 2002. "We have not seen any inclination by the Hu administration to make any symbolic moves to appease human rights concerns," says Nicholas Bequelin, a China expert with Human Rights Watch. "The fact that China refuses to do it is an indication of how conservative and how little inclined to liberalization this administration is." ...In Beijing last week, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi brushed off questions from reporters about whether prisoners might be released to win goodwill for Hu's trip. "China is a country under the rule of law," Yang said. "We handle cases according to the law." Biff- were Taiwan to be taken by China, one flinches thinking how the law would be thrown at the locals.

China Arming Iran With Advanced Missile Technology : Iran demonstrated its newfound missile technology from China by test-firing a new anti-ship missile during recent military exercises. The shore-launched firing of a C-701 anti-ship missile was carried out by Iran during the large-scale war games. Iranian reports described the test-firing of a "Kosar" missile during the games. ...The Iranian test is the first demonstration of a radar-guided C-701, giving the small missile the capability to search and lock onto a target ship without direct control. CPMIEC sources claim the new C-701/Kosar is equipped with an advanced millimeter-wave radar seeker that can provide high-resolution target imagery, allowing the missile to identify its target and select a specific impact point. Biff- This is my first time linking to Newsmax. I'm not encouraged by the fact the article's author is listed at the bottom of the webpage as appearing on UFO enthusiast Jeff Rense's radio show (whose website hosts columns by, amongst others, Sherman Skolnick: a one-hit wonder with a judicial expose under his belt in the 1960's and who's since evolved into a superior visionary with his own cable show where he explains the dozens of murders he envisions in each presidential closet. If memory serves, he's convinced that Clinton murdered a dozen US generals or so). Anyway, the background info in the article appears to tally with what I've previously come across.

Taiwan cool to Beijing's 'poisoned candies' : Taiwan, for its part, has been eager to receive tourists from the mainland. "Aside from the possible economic interests, what is really [a worthwhile result of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan] is the cultural shock," the senior cross-strait affairs official explained.

China, Russia welcome Iran into the fold : The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which maintained it had no plans for expansion, is now changing course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan, which previously had observer status, will become full members. ...Speaking in Beijing as recently as January 17, the organization's secretary general Zhang Deguang had been quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying: "Absorbing new member states needs a legal basis, yet the SCO has no rules concerning the issue. Therefore, there is no need for some Western countries to worry whether India, Iran or other countries would become new members." ...Visiting Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi told Itar-TASS in Moscow that the membership expansion "could make the world more fair". Biff- Given that fairness is a mostly, if not entirely, bogus concept at the level of nation-state this is hardly reassuring. That this rationale springs from a vision of international relations as a traditional morality play (always a bad sign) suggests further the audience he has in mind, i.e. the choir he's preaching to (pun intended). - And what's the point of reading atimes.com if not for the conspiracy theories: Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, wrote: "The US's long term goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic military and strategic significance."

2006-04-17T14:17:00.000+08:00

Swenson's Breakfast Club -- Saturday, May 6: First, our May meeting will be on the first Saturday, May 6th, at the same place Swensen's on Keelung Road, at 9:30 am. [MT: ADDRESS 9:30 am at the same place as last month; Swensen's #81 Keelung Rd. Sec. 2, Taipei.]You will get a second reminder of this in the week before the meeting, but this is to help you plan ahead.

Our speaker will be member Syd Goldsmith and he will talk on "Impressions of Taiwan both personal and from the perspective of the American Presence in Taiwan"Syd first came to Taiwan as a language student in 1968 and from 1970 to 74 he served as Taiwanese Political Officer for the American Embassy (remember this was before the USA switiched its Embassy to Beijing). During this time numerous things were going on; Peng Ming-min escaped. Peng once a darling of the KMT had been arrested and imprisoned in 1964 for a manifesto calling for a democratic constitution and Formosan self-determination. It was later when he was under house arrest that he escaped. During this time Kissinger began his secret meetings in Beijing which led to Nixon's visit and the Shanghai Communique. Interesting times.

ESWN and Apple Daily: Reprise - ESWN once again goes for an Apple Daily piece that looks made up (Roland, when are you going to warn your readers that Apple Daily is known to make up, misreport, and exaggerate stories? Do you think it is ethical for a blogger who claims to have no agenda and who is an international news source not to place that warning there?).

Cost-Effective Warfare? It is often forgotten that Gen. Claire Chennault's famous Flying Tigers operated in China as a Private Military Corporation at the beginning of World War II. The pilots were paid a bonus for each aircraft kill. It was highly effective.

Two Chinas: There are two Chinas and they exist in separate universes. Now, this is not any great revelation. We've discussed it here many times, especially in regard to local officials who are free to act at whim with no fear of reprisal or justice, existing literally in a universe apart from The central Party. Lin said the great paradox here is that despite Hu's awesome power, he is literally helpless to make any changes in China's domestic situation, only in its foreign policy (which, granted, can then in turn affect China's domestic situation). ...Update: Just to be clear, Lin believes China is utterly intent on winning Taiwan, no matter how pacifist it makes itself appear. "Hu's idea is to seize Taiwan as a ravishingly beautiful and smiling bride and to hold her in China's embrace," he said. "He intends to win it as he would a shining trophy, which he will then place, undented, on a shelf." Biff- Undented? Hmm... First of all, one of China's prime considerations on taking over the island will be political: how to undermine Taiwanese independence ideology and keep it down? Using such excuses as the chaos of war and the martial exuberance known as collateral damage, permanently disappear specific pains in the ass. Exit all foreigners. Ban reporters save those with peckers affixed firmly in the CCP's pocket. Arrest various activists, politicians, reporters and writers and jail them for lengthy terms. Depress funding for local universities and move the better part of their equipment and libraries to China. Flood the island with Mainlanders who will work for peanuts and give them various economic/guanxi incentives and tax breaks. Put mainlanders in all positions of power from political to constabulary to bureaucratic. Eliminate the local currency at a punishing conversion rate to destroy people's savings and investments and thus further clear the way for mainlanders trying to get a leg over. Move local industry over to mainland China via fiat and regulation and/or nationalization for allegedly patriotic motives and otherwise turn Taiwan into a crony capitalist/carpetbagging backwater.

Much of this was done by the Soviet Union in 1945/46 with Japanese assets in Manchuria and by the KMT in the latter 1940's moving Taiwanese assets to China. Perhaps large economic migration out of Taiwan to the major cities of China will be encouraged. The focus of Taiwan's economy will return to agriculture and low-tech like Japan's islands of Kyushu and Hokkaido. New infrastructure will largely facilitate new military installations ringing the island as Taiwan's primary purpose returns to unsinkable aircraft carrier shielding China from the US, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam while extending its reach into the Pacific and acquiring additional South China Sea assets (Spratly Island oil and natural gas, for example). Not only does all of this win kudos from nationalists and job-seekers within China, but it ensures Taiwan's people lack wealth and leisure time to engage in political activism and other naughtiness. I presume the post-bellum poverty of the Southern Confederate states (whether deliberate or accidental) helped ensure that there was no significant resurgence of Southern Independence activism in the US post-1865.

New Japan-China spat over gas:

As China, U.S. Vie for More Oil, Diplomatic Friction May Follow: In 2004, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., also known as Sinopec, became one of just five companies to win the right to explore for natural gas in the uninviting desert known as the Empty Quarter, edging out U.S. companies interested in the area. The kingdom has invested in Chinese refinery projects, and in January, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz visited Hu in Beijing. "Saudi Arabia is taking a Chinese wife," said Charles W. Freeman Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia who has extensive diplomatic experience in China. "The Saudis are not divorcing us. In Islam you can have more than one wife and they can manage that."...Sinopec has also acquired a 40 percent stake in Canada's Northern Lights oil sands project, which is expected to produce about 100,000 barrels a day by 2010. Biff- So Canada's oil sands are financially viable after all. I first heard about the oil sands back in the 1970s when everyone knew that oil would run out in the 1980s. Environmental activists were screeching in detail about how pollution was causing global cooling and how we were on the verge of an Ice Age. The more things change, the more the underlying scams remain the same.

Japan: Soaplands and love hotels : The office ladies, secretaries and elevator-operators greet their bosses and customers in pristine white gloves and high-collared suits, their hair tied back into tight ribbons. But later that night, they don neon micro-minis and breast-clinging halter tops as they gyrate in nightclubs or rendezvous in "love hotels." Context, in other words, is everything. Even so, what's tolerated with little fuss or moral hand-wringing in Japan remains striking. Hiro Fujiwara, a man in his 30s who helped produce pornographic videos before manning his parents' noodle stand in an Osaka neighborhood, tells me that "pornography is sort of seen as a good outlet for men, a sign of a healthy man, like drinking a lot of alcohol." His friend, Kazuyo, a woman in her mid-20s, concurs, adding that "women don't mind so much because it means the man is normal. He watches when he is alone." Biff- It's so refreshing to see people be straight up about this kind of thing. Japanese men picking up chicks at random at train stations, Japanese women buying escorts in Bali and engaging in competitive sex in Hawaii. It's sex made as uncomplicated, or complicated, as can be. Choice (and competence) is a wonderful thing. Sylvia makes a vomit gesture. "Just like those love hotels -- can you believe it? You pay money for a few hours of just sex. It's so ... mechanical," she repeats. Biff- Like so many things in life sweetheart: your mechanical vomit gesture for example...

THE FRIGHTENING TRUTH OF WHY IRAN WANTS A BOMB: spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad's strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the "Dr Kissinger of Islam", President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have "run away". Iran's current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by "divine coincidence", corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys. Biff- Amir Taheri writes for a variety of publications such as the Wall Street Journal. This article is chock full of the inadvertant comedy which keeps the Third World poor and the developing world dangerously lunatic at times. ...According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or "nails", whose presence, hammered into mankind's existence, prevents the universe from "falling off". Although the "nails" are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad's more passionate admirers insist that he is a "nail", a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations' General Assembly in New York, the "Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light".

Outback 'skeleton' recalls ordeal: But he told the Times he stopped his Mitsubishi Challenger on the Buntine Highway to give an Aboriginal man a lift. Mr Megee told the paper: "The last thing I remember was driving up the road and getting a bit dazed and confused. "The next thing was waking up, face down, in a hole.

Biff- From Bruce Chatwin's book “The Songlines”:

'Because gipsies', I said, 'also see themselves as hunters. The world is their hunting ground. Settlers are "sitting game". The gipsy word for "settler" is the same as the word for "meat".
Flynn turned to face me.
'You know what our people call the white man?' He asked.
'Meat,' I suggested.
'And you know what they call a welfare check?'
'Also meat.'
'Bring a chair,' he said.' I want to talk to you.'
--

Giant Mao statue erected in Tibet

2006-04-16T06:39:00.000+08:00

中國律師從業困難重重: 張思之先生是中國律師界泰斗。他見證了四九年後中國律師制度的產生、覆滅以及恢愎與發展，辦理了多起有歷史影響的重大案件，如林彪四人幫案，魏京生案，王軍濤案等。數十年浸潤其間，對中國律師制度的認識非常深刻，訪問時感慨良多。

俄國革命成功後的共妻: 深入研究布爾什維克革命史的史學家指出︰在共產理論中，不僅財產公有，而且寫明了家庭必將消亡、一夫一妻制是私有制的產物。共產制度就是要消滅建築在私有制上的婚姻和家庭。

Throwing Off China: In Toshikata’s rendering, stalwart Japanese soldiers with a huge “Rising Sun” military flag in their midst advance against a Chinese force in utter disarray. Can we trust the veracity of this artistic rendering? Surely we can, for on the right-hand side of Toshikata’s print we see a delegation of Japanese “newspaper correspondents” that includes at its head not one but two artists, identified by name. Depictions such as this very print, Toshikata seems to be assuring his audience—and right at the start of the war—could be trusted to be accurate. The overwhelming majority of war prints were, in fact, nothing of the sort. ...In these circumstances, prints often simply “quoted” other prints. In early November 1894, for example, Toshikata’s colleague Watanabe Nobukazu produced a rendering of “Our Forces’ Great Victory and Occupation of Jiuliancheng” that bore close resemblance to Toshikata’s “Hurrah, Hurrah” of over three months earlier. Disciplined soldiers looked down from on high, other troops advancing below them. The same military flag fluttered in the same right hand panel of the triptych; a bent and gnarled pine, so beloved in Japanese art, was again rooted in the center of the image; the foe retreated in the far distance. Biff- Well-worth visiting this site for its large mpegs of 19th century Japanese woodblock prints.

7,000-year-old pottery offers clues to origin of Chinese characters

齊芳罷官 (Qi Fang removed from office) : The thing I found interesting is that she claimed that she was unwilling to accept the level of personal control the pagent organizers were planning on exerting over her. 　齊芳今天表示，“在合同內容中，出現了很多讓我很驚訝的條款。如：要求我將所有的親友名單及聯絡方式、背景、住址告訴他們；讓我在每天的24小時內，隨時聽候總部的調遣；安排助理全天跟隨，包括會見親友、包括談戀愛，都有在場；給任何人通電話，都要告訴助理對方是什麼人，且通話時，不得避開助理；同時，必須接受該助理和我住在同一間房間。” Biff- Worth reading the original chinese article. If nothing else, I have to respect the chutzpah I've seen repeatedly in China, something critically lacking in Taiwan outside of waishengren, aboriginal, and mafia circles. Imagine having to live with the following constraints for a full year: 從齊芳向記者出示的“有關年度環球中國小姐合同期間的規章制度”中，可以看到以下條款：“在一年合同期間，除中國總部同意的正常應酬必須晚回居住地外，環球中國小姐每晚必須不晚於22點回到合同酒店或公寓。”“在一年合同期間，中國總部派出一名工作人員協助環球中國小姐工作，為工作方便及安全起見，該工作人員與環球中國小姐居住同一客房，並同進同出，包括外出、吃飯等所有活動。”“為了中國總部的責任及對環球中國小姐安全起見，在中國總部詢問時，環球中國小姐必須向中國總部如實彙報在合同期間所聯繫的所有社會關係，包括親屬、朋友、同學等名稱、聯絡方式等。”“在一年合同期間，環球中國小姐不得私自外出，所有未經中國總部安排的任何事宜均不許私自接洽。”

Menzies Continued : Far from being “burdened with the doctrinaire belief that ‘no Chinese Map of the World could possibly exist,’” I think I can speak for most of my colleagues in the field of Chinese history when I say that a). scholars have a full appreciation of the development of Chinese science and technology before the modern era, and b). historians of China would be, in principle, delighted to discover conclusive evidence that Ming voyages reached America (what scholar doesn’t take pride in the achievements of the place and time they study?). Biff- My fifty cents worth is that Gavin Menzies is talking out of his backside. Too bad. But that's the problem right there isn't it? Wishful thinking that the impossible could just possibly, maybe, improbably be true. Which is what led me to waste a few quid and subsidize his fantasies (and mine). Fools leap where angels fear to tread.

2006-04-15T01:14:00.000+08:00

Pure Blood and Political Football: Korea has a hypocritical ``gold standard’’ about pure blood. Mixed-race people are looked on as somehow inferior _ even to the point of disgust. What shouldn’t be forgotten is that Korea has been conquered and overrun many times during its history. Invaders have come from east and west. Like the proverbial melting pot of America that inevitable mixing of blood could well be an underlying strength in this mongrel country.

Raising Little Nationalists: ...in a year or two, today’s 1st graders will be taught to be proud that Koreans are racially ``pure.’’ Hands up, children, if this reminds you of a World War. If this is what they are taught in school, it’s no wonder people who were born after the Japanese occupation of Korea are more anti-Japanese than the people who actually experienced it. Have you ever wondered why Korea is the only country on the Chinese fringe without a thriving Chinese business community? They were suppressed and no one thought twice about it.

Why the West will attack Iran: (Biff- An old Spengler column from January) By far the biggest loser in an Iranian confrontation with the West will be China, the fastest-growing among the world's large economies, but also the least efficient in energy use. Higher oil prices will harm China's economy more than any other, and Beijing's reluctance to back Western efforts to encircle Iran are understandable in this context. It is unclear how China will proceed if the rest of the international community confronts Iran; in the great scheme of things it really does not matter. ...We have begun the third act of the tragedy that started on September 11, 2001, and I see no way to prevent it from proceeding.

GI Crimes Myth: ...the examples of bastard GI Crimes Koreans have been able to tell me about have ALWAYS turned out to be examples that prove the exact opposite of what they desperately want to believe -- like the 1993 horrible Markle Murder Case. Markle still sits in a Korean prison to this day (Dec. 2005). The murder was brutal, but the GI was convicted, and in a Korean civilian criminal court, (something a Korean soldier criminal never faces, because they are always tried by the Korean military court system). Biff- but isn't this always the case with whining nationalists (most of whom viscerally fear those possessing a knowledge of history and are thus usually the first to run to the barricades to oppose both free speech and democracy). Like the Opium War with the professional, and even amateur, Chinese nationalist. "Opium was forced upon us!" Except that opium has been part of Chinese pharmacopia since the 4th century AD. "Opium was a Western poison used to destroy China!" Except that not only was opium already in use in China, but opium was also a popular and legal over the counter medicine used in Britain at that time as well. Not to mention that China did not exist in the 19th century. It's a complete misnomer. A convenient one for nationalists though. China died in 1644 when it was swallowed up by Manchuria and only reemerged under Yuan Shi-kai after which it disappeared until Mao rechristened the territory New China (Xin Hua). But of course with nationalists pursuit of power by hook or by crook is the motivation. Truth is literally unimportant. If one issue can't be bent to use, then another, any other, fair or foul, true or false, will do.

Get Out! Just Not Now...: The average, not so anti-American Korean believes US soldiers rape hundreds of Korean women and even kill a dozen or so every year. I was told this my first month inKorea and when I asked others over the years, 80%+ told me "that's about right." ...A common poster [featuring bin Laden] carried at anti-US rallies in late 2001 thru 2002. Some adults were shocked to find that Korean children viewed Bin Laden as a hero, because they had learned so consistently from the news, schools, pop culture, (and their parents) that (South) Korea's biggest "enemy" is the US. ... If you look back to each time the US has talked of withdrawing troops, the Koreans say, "Not now. It is too dangerous now. After X, then we will discuss it."It was the same in 1993. It was the same in 1977. It was the same in 1971.The Koreans won't add that - in the meantime - they want to continue to hate you too. Biff- I'm all for a free press. Very much so. But caveat emptor. The press, consisting primarily of young fools with more interest in padding a resume than pursuing the truth, is at times a worse enemy to the public interest than politicians: politicians being a crew as transparently dishonest as the serially dishonest electorate that puts it in office. ...Patriotism, nationalism, racialism, hatred of minorities, xenophobia - all means to an end. Interesting from an anthro point of view how many different paradigms have evolved to unify people for the purpose of achieving strength through numbers. ...Give people something they need once, they're grateful. Give it to them repeatedly, they're resentful for needing you. Later hateful. As Mark Twain put it: the difference between a man and a dog is that if you feed a dog, it won't bite you. Such a simple rule of thumb. But heeded by so few...

KMT legislators and Ma Ying-jeou: It’s always been a criticism of Ma that he’s all style, and no substance - and he hasn’t (yet) done much to refute that as KMT Chairman. ‘The ghost of chairmen past’. Ex-KMT Chairman (serial loser, and king of all things negative and bitter) Lien Chan is still a very influental figure in the KMT. He is not a fan of Ma (he even flouted party rules to show that he voted for Wang in the KMT election), and has always been keen on the ‘block everything’ approach to opposition politics

三百農民不如一個兵: 眾所周知，中國農業人口至少還有七億五千萬；中共軍隊人數則至多為二百五十萬。農業人口是軍隊人數的三百倍。然而，面向七億五千萬人的農村支出，和二百五十萬人的軍費開銷，幾乎相差無幾！即三百個農民，不如一個兵！況且，外界一致判斷，中共軍費開銷的實際數字遠遠大於其公佈的數字。可見，「放在首位」的，決不是中南海口口聲聲的「三農問題」，而是他們念茲在茲的軍事開銷。養肥一支軍隊，以確保政權的安穩。

愚弄西藏何時了？: 今年是個「逢六」年，在中國近百年歷史上，逢六的大日子很多，從一九○六年西太后宣布立憲一百周年開始，到一九七六年四人幫倒台三十周年，據說大陸的媒體，已經在策劃專題，準備大做文章。但是，忽然一盆冷水潑下來﹕中宣部指示，逢六活動一律不准搞。原來政府有苦衷，逢六活動中有一個要命的日子﹕「文化大革命」開始四十周年。盡人皆知，文革是中共歷史上的奇恥大辱，自己殺自己，幾乎殺到亡黨的地步，搞得全國昏天黑地，共產黨幾十年的神話全部破產。盡管老鄧己將文革定為「浩劫」，但遺留的問題太多，是非渾沌，一筆糊塗賬，當局以圖不了了之，就怕打開缺口，不可收拾。

台灣會走向“奴役之路”嗎？: 台灣在新政府上台的三個多月，除了社會福利這種冷的社會主義被高度需求外，對于股市、匯市和房市等市場的干預更甚以往，而在產業政策方面也有強化的跡象。再看台面上的人物，主張社會福利和凱因斯學派者居多，以及已有“民粹”的輿論評語和一味往舉債方向思考等等現象觀之，台灣步向海耶克五十多年前所言的“到奴役之路”不是很有可能的嗎？國人，特別是有發言份量及掌權者，是有必要好好地、虛心地向《到奴役之路》取經啊！ Biff- the Taipei government continues to destroy nightmarkets under the guise of rationalizing operations. This, in practice, results in ramming bureaucratic standards down businesspeople's throats which makes for higher costs of operations, reduced diversity (in the two markets I've seen the government walk in, literally half of the businesses closed), and customers whining in private and throwing up their hands when the coast is clear. People forget, or don't realize, that politicians have a constant need to invent excuses for showboating, otherwise they don't get reelected. The problem, here as in Canada, isn't the politicians, but the monkeys who put them in office: the benighted electorate.

'First face transplant' for China

At What Cost Israel-China Ties?: Nearly a dozen U.S. official reports accused Israel of various improprieties, and most of them pertained to its dealings with China.[19] Perhaps the most devastating of these was the report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, (popularly known as the Cox Report after House Policy Committee chairman Christopher Cox [Republican, Calif.]). The declassified portion explicitly identified Israel as one of the suppliers of high-tech weapons to China and charged that Israel "has provided both weapons and technology to the PRC [Peoples' Republic of China], most notably to assist the PRC in developing its F-10 fighter and airborne early warning aircraft."[20]

2006-04-14T17:01:00.000+08:00

Anti-US / USFK News and Views from South Korea: The main purpose of this site is to present reviews of Key Moments and Key Issues in the anti-US / USFK culture that is the norm in South Korean society. The effort has been to explain how anti-US activity in Korea is society wide and A Process: A process of keeping an acceptable amount of ill-will against the United States' role or position related to South Korea. Keeping things never too hot --- for fear of generating an anti-Korean backlash in American society, or giving Korea a bad name due to international media coverage, or causing the US government to re-think its commitment to defend Korea but, never too cold either. It is a process of also keeping continual reminders of how the United States is at best A Necessary Evil for Korea. If you look at the drop down menus to the left and read some of those reviews, I believe you will begin to see the tale-tell patterns of the anti-US culture in Korea and how it functions as a social norm --- not some isolated problem with a "radical minority." Biff- Haven't checked it out in detail yet, but sounds fascinating. Morality plays bore me. System analysis. Now that's something potentially useful with application per corollary to China, Canada, the US itself, etc...

One Big, Leaky Basket: South Korea has arrested a Taiwanese man for spying for North Korea. What’s not entirely clear is whether the man was spying for prodigal son Kim Jong Nam, and what JN’s relationship is to North Korea these days:

China curbs foreign news footage: The Chinese government keeps a firm grip on the mediaChina's government has told local TV stations not to use video from foreign sources to produce news bulletins.

Bush's October surprise - it's coming: One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War. ...Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is the sort of villain that Central Casting once sourced for studio film productions in Hollywood. No more than Napoleon Bonaparte could stay away from Russia can Ahmadinejad abandon Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Myanmar woos China, Russia: "It's no accident that China has almost unreservedly backed anyone who becomes the target of US criticism and pressure - like Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe," according to an Asian diplomat. "Beijing is operating under the old adage: your enemies' foes must be your friend," he added.

Beijing, the Vatican and the Zen factor: For many priests and bishops, the net result of the normalization of ties with the Vatican would be that they would have to obey both the Holy See and Beijing, whereas now they obey nobody. They would lose all their freedom in the name of the supreme good, the reconciliation of the Vatican with Beijing. People, even priests, might be not that generous. In fact these priests can argue that there are plenty of reasonable grounds for not normalizing ties with Beijing, or for putting a very high price on it.

金正日擬密訪印尼打破孤立:　印尼總統尤多約諾在訪問緬甸之後，將於近期訪問北韓和南韓。北韓邀請印尼參與六方會談以充當「和事老」角色。金正日接受邀請將密訪印尼，是他執掌政權以來首次訪問中國和俄羅斯以外的國家，打破在外交上長期孤立的局面。

美聯印制中啟動新冷戰: 美國加速軍事圍堵中國策略。總統布殊訪問印度，確定向印度提供核子及飛彈技術。美意圖聯印制中，賠上全球核秩序，削弱反恐陣線，加劇南亞的軍備競爭，將亞洲推向新冷戰時代。

Malaysia - Badawi's grand plan: The prime minister's grand plan would have been more impressive still had he taken the opportunity to scrap the expensive positive-discrimination policies, in force since 1970, that aim to help “bumiputra” (Malays and other indigenous races) catch up with Chinese and Indian minorities. ...However, as in post-apartheid South Africa, which adopted a similar “black empowerment” policy, the result has often been “encronyment”, with most benefits going to a well-connected few.

2006-04-13T10:52:00.000+08:00

China's expanding Pacific footprint: It is up to the leaders of China's new economic dependencies to wake up to the reality of the bargains they have struck. There is usually a hidden price to be paid, in the form of Chinese asset stripping - fish stocks and irreplaceable tropical timber are the main targets - and political sclerosis that favours corruption and dictatorship. Governments are understandably eager to receive Chinese money and political support but they should understand that nothing comes for free with a foreign policy devoid of ethics. Biff- not devoid of ethics, but simply different quids exchanged for different quos. All relationships are in a constant state of negotiation in real time. Ergo, the article would be more useful if it provided rules of thumb per engagement rather than trivializing events via injecting a children's morality play of do-gooders and baddies into the works.

Climate of Fear: Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Biff- Here's Mencken on another topic, but the rule of thumb applies equally as well: April 3, 1927 - I hope no one will be upset and alarmed by the fact that various bishops, college presidents, Rotary lecturers and other such professional damned fools are breaking into print with high-falutin discussions of the alleged wave of student suicides. Such men, it must be manifest, seldom deal with realities. Their whole lives are devoted to inventing bugaboos, and then laying them. Like the news editors, they will tire of this bogus wave after a while, and go yelling after some other phantasm. Meanwhile, the world will go staggering on. Their notions are never to be taken seriously. Their one visible function on earth is to stand as living proofs that education is by no means synonymous with intelligence.

The s-word : ...To confuse the issue, a non-disabled colleague had overheard and told me that she found that term offensive and thanked me not to use it in front of her. I was offended that she was offended because I didn't feel it was her place to be offended... after all, it's not her word and she wouldn't have been taunted with it. ...Interestingly though, Scope were criticised by many younger disabled people last October after they came out against a new US brand of wheelchair, The Spazz, which started selling in Britain. Biff- People who play the "I'm offended" card are just as logic-challenged as those who play the race-card or any other card. Sloganeering and ex-cathedra claims of moral piety ain't no substitute for debate. Which is of course the attraction to the insincere and mentally feeble.

CHINA’S “MALACCA DILEMMA”: The PRC has also watched with concern India’s enhanced presence in the area, especially the modernization of military facilities on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands located near the northern entrance to the Malacca Strait. Some Chinese newspaper commentaries have bordered on the paranoid. For instance, when the United States restored the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program to Indonesia last year, one Chinese newspaper accused U.S.-Indonesia military cooperation as “targeting China” and aimed “at controlling China’s avenue of approach to the Pacific” (Takungpao, March 7, 2005). Biff- Paranoia which comes from the warm and fuzzy conceit that one is the primadonna center of attention. It often comes as a shock when locals discover that US international news ain't focused on China.

THE STRATEGIC VULNERABILITY OF CHINA’S RELIANCE ON COAL: The need to transport coal, consisting of 40 percent of all freight in China, creates bottlenecks that prevent exports (Asian Development Bank, 2002). Lacking a means to move their products to external or even coastal markets, the inland provincial economies can produce only for themselves. Even goods that in a period of declining profit margins in China could be produced more efficiently and profitably in these inland provinces cannot be moved beyond local markets. The net result is that the bottlenecks created by coal exacerbate unemployment problems and restrict economic potential. Transporting coal, in part, was a significant reason for the failure of the “Open Up the West” campaign designed to improve the economic performance of these inland provinces. Barring substantial reform, the “New Socialist Countryside” campaign is unlikely to prove more fruitful.

Print me a heart and a set of arteries: To print 3D structures, Forgacs and his colleagues alternate layers of supporting gel, dubbed "biopaper", with the bioink droplets. To build tubes that could serve as blood vessels, for instance, they lay down successive rings containing muscle and endothelial cells, which line our arteries and veins. "We can print any desired structure, in principle," Forgacs told the meeting.

BEIJING’S “NEW THINKING” ON ENERGY SECURITY: In the past year, top Chinese policymakers have emphasized the fact that China, as a developing economy, is paying a huge price for mounting oil prices, a point not always recognized in the West. In 2004 alone, Beijing had to spend an extra US$7 billion of its foreign exchange due to climbing oil prices, with payment totaling over US$43 billion, making crude oil and product oil the country’s largest single import item. As reported by Sinopecnews, this had a negative impact on consumption, investment, export and import, and China’s GDP suffered a 0.8 percent downturn.

2006-04-12T10:28:00.000+08:00

Rumsfeld to Reporter: “I Have a Real Daytime Job” (VIDEO) : RUMSFELD: You think I’m going to stand around reading your books and disputing things in them or validating or not validating? I have a real daytime job. ... The fact that I haven't disputed something—I mean, if I disputed all of the mythology that comes out of this group and the books of the world, I wouldn’t have any time to do anything else. Biff- I'm neither pro-Republican nor pro-Democrat. But it's wonderful to see a politico taking down a presumptuous reporter.

法國是個神經質的女人？法國從攻打巴士底獄的暴民革命，到拿破侖的武力征伐，建立帝國，再到共產主義雛型的巴黎公社，一路充斥反秩序、反傳統，反法治、反道德的革命瘋頭。在這種“瘋狂”中，人性最原始、丑陋、殘忍的一面，充分大爆發。法國首創流行的斷頭台，是醫生發明的。狄更斯的名著《雙城記》中那個凶惡的暴民老太婆更是鮮明的象征。這種暴民政治，甚至比任何專制都可怕。就像中國的文化大革命一樣，是最無法無天的殘酷時代（可今天還有人歌頌有個人民文革，是前造反派們要肯定自己的歷史吧？）

PBS: The Tank Man - After all others had been silenced, his lonely act of defiance against the Chinese regime catalyzed the world. What became of him? And 17 years later, has China succeeded in erasing this event from its history? Biff- For those who can endure the deliberate languor of PBS. For me, Huell Howser's "California Gold" series was the last straw. More insulting than even Sesame Street.

On North Korea: Communist China’s Colony - Anyone who examines or comments on the Korean peninsula’s political situation is aware of its people’s painful history as victims of colonization. Unfortunately, many assume said colonization ended with the Second World War. While the last colonial power in southern Korea was indeed removed in 1945, the northern half of peninsula simply switched colonial masters – from Imperial Japan to the Soviet Union and (now solely) Communist China. ...The Communists themselves answered that question with their brazen “historical” claim to Koguryo, the ancient Korean kingdom whose boundaries just happen to include “most of modern North Korea” (London Telegraph via Washington Times). The significance of this is plain: the Communists used the same type of pseudo-history to justify seizing Tibet in 1950. With precedent in place, the message was sent: Kim Jong-il will do our bidding, or we’ll simply take northern Korea for our own.

China: Sex work to support the family - Fortunately, things began to turn for the better for Xu. One of her former "customers" helped cure her disease and even proposed to her. She refused, but gained happiness from the whole ordeal. Biff- but how does this fit into the woe-is-me narrative? And of course, customers are always proposing marriage to prostitutes. That fact never seems to show it's dirty face in the usual diatribes. Not to mention the hordes of Japanese soldiers who dated and/or proposed marriage to comfort women. Complicated stuff. Too complicated for most reporters: a simpleminded incurious bunch... But in 2005, Xu did receive an email from her brother about the news of a Wuhan University college student who was infected with HIV after having sex with a foreigner... Biff- That's about as likely as being paid in three dollar bills... And the larger subtext to this story is that professional sex pays well. Ergo, bimbos don't end up in the gutter. They end up financially solvent. But how often does that awkward rule of thumb make it into the diatribes? Pffft!

Mystery of Japan abductee deepens: Pyongyang returned what it said were Ms Yokota's remains to Japan in November 2004, but Japanese officials said tests showed the remains came from a number of people and were not Ms Yokota's. Biff- Given the cults of personality, conspiracy theories and anti-information nature of despotisms, it often seems as if there's no act too arrogant and dim-witted for despots and their minions. To wit, Saddam's decision to go toe to toe with the US and the Iranian leadership's present burst of apocalyptic madness.

Political Correctness Is Alive and Well on College Campuses: At one point during a Vagina Monlogues staging in 2001, three professors wrote a letter in the campus newspaper, not advocating that the performance be stopped, but simply presenting the idea that the play entails, as much as anything else, the misandrist, carping pseudo-victimology of a group of people who claim to be oppressed while actually being more wealthy and privileged than 99%+ of all the people who have ever lived on this planet. Rather than acknowledging the free-speech rights of all (let alone actually considering the points being raised), the campus feminists chose react in several unconscionable ways. One angrily called one of the critics “a cheap Jew.” Biff- When I think of how little of utility I learned during four and a half years of university attending first a computer science and then a history program, cripes... 95% of successful novelists don't go to college. Twain didn't, Orwell didn't, Mencken didn't, and the pattern continues down to the present day. Bill Gates is a college dropout, the late Peter Jennings was a high-school dropout. By sophomore year, I knew college was a complete waste of time for me but I didn't have the balls to drop out. Regrets, regrets...

2006-04-11T18:45:00.000+08:00

What He Weifang said : When Tocqueville analyzed the American and French revolutions, he wrote that many national revolutions will fail not because they refused to reform but because they reformed. They would have remained peaceful if they did not reform. The reform actually brought violence. Therefore, during the reform process, unless there is general coodination such that all the legs move forward at the same time, a reform may cause many big problems, or there may be even worst social problems as a result of the reform.

The French youth unemployment fallacy: France produces roughly as much as Britain with fewer people working, so who has the problem?

I'm not racist, but ... How could a judge not realise the seriousness of playground abuse? It is about time white people learnt that you can not feel the full impact of racist abuse unless you are the victim of racist abuse yourself. Racial abuse is the most devastating form of insult possible. Biff- Loved Sparklehorse's sarcasm in the comment section: "I'm not a racist but ... it is about time white people learnt." Say no more.

China Rises: The Oldest Civilization on Earth, Reborn. Biff- Despite the patronizing intro, this vid in the full wasn't half as painful as expected. There's some vid clips and other stuff online here at the NYTimes website.

Chinese Turn to Civic Power as a New Tool : This winter, Liu Xianhong’s life was changed for the second time by her infection with AIDS. The first time was seven years ago, when she discovered that she, along with her newborn son, had contracted the disease through an infusion of contaminated blood given to her during childbirth. Biff- one is not infected with AIDS, but with HIV. And AIDS is not a disease but a syndrome. And no one in China with AIDS would be alive after seven years, short of a miracle. Here's Wikipedia: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),[1] the late stage of which leaves individuals prone to opportunistic infections and tumours. ... AIDS is the most severe manifestation of infection with HIV.

Back to the Maoist Future: ...In Zimbabwe, for example, President Robert Mugabe's repeated political and human rights abuses led the United States and the E.U. to impose punitive sanctions against the regime. Beijing's response was to sell Zimbabwe over $200 million worth of fighter aircraft and military vehicles. Beijing also provided equipment for jamming antigovernment media broadcasts and gave electronic surveillance equipment to Harare's security services to monitor political opponents... Not surprisingly, Beijing publicly praises Mugabe, who impoverished the once-prosperous Zimbabwe, as "a man of great achievements, devoted to world peace and a good friend of the Chinese people."

Boeing pays $15 million fine: According to the State Department charges, between 2000 and 2003 Boeing shipped overseas 94 commercial jets with the QRS-11 gyrochip embedded in the flight boxes, including 19 to China. Export of listed defense items to China is specifically proscribed.

The Philippines' taste for civet coffee : ...it comes from an unusual source - the droppings of a nocturnal, cat-like animal called the palm civet. Now the coffee has become so successful they are hoping to start brewing up profits in Taiwan and North America.

2006-04-10T19:47:00.000+08:00

Taiwanese Entertainment Shows 台灣綜藝節目: In China, Taiwanese music and entertainment shows as well as celebrities enjoy a much higher profile and regard as compared to the local Chinese ones. In fact, the Chinese authorities had to issue a directive banning 'taiwanese-style mandarin and accent' on their local productions in 2005 as it was getting very popular for mainland Chinese hosts and tv programs to emulate and copy their more welcome Taiwanese counterparts...

Why China's rise could be more peaceful than those of other powers : Though oceans apart, they embarked on similar careers. The first step was national unification. In Japan, the Meiji Restoration consolidated fragmented, feudal power into a technocratic and imperial state. In Germany, Bismarck fused 25 kingdoms and duchies into the Second Reich. In the U.S., the Civil War ended with the Union restored. Step two was rampant economic growth, with all three overtaking the established powers in the production of iron, steel and energy—those industries that would soon yield guns, bombs and ships. Step three: expansion and war. ... Will China go down the same blood-soaked road?

Missile Defense Is Inadequate: Report - New Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles, submarines and fast-attack boats are "creating the capability to push US ships out of even marginally-effective missile defense range. Even if US AEGIS ships find a way to survive in an increasingly hostile anti-access environment, they face a real challenge to effectively defending Taiwan," Campbell and Gertler say.
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Taiwan Should Stop Exaggerating Its Vulnerability : despite a population less than half the size of Britain’s, an industrial and technological giant with over $130 billion of foreign exports each year. In the last few years it has grown faster than South Korea. Its investments of capital, machinery and personnel in China largely made possible China’s own technological revolution. Despite its isolation from the WHO, it has a fine national health service, only second in the world to Sweden’s according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Politically it becomes maturer by the year. Its democracy appears to have put down deeper roots than many much older ones.
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Washington Post: A Good Leak - Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling. Biff- as usual, my point is not to defend politicians but to get at the heart of what and why they do. Conspiracy theories and venom don't help. ...The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.
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Heated row at Indonesian Playboy : A caller to Jakarta's 68H radio said: "It's a scandal! There's no nude women in the magazine. I think we have been deceived." Another said: "It's sinful to read Playboy if there's no nudity."
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Japanese ferry runs into 'whale' : A high-speed Japanese ferry has collided with what is thought to be a whale, leaving 49 people injured - 13 in a serious condition.

2006-04-09T10:06:00.000+08:00

Set out the Good China: The President's Coming : Mr. Bush is especially stingy with state visits (he's been host to a mere five in five years — for India, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland and Kenya) and is no fan of formal occasions. But they also know what the Chinese know: that Mr. Hu is getting less than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who was accorded a full state visit by President Bill Clinton in 1997. And to the Chinese, that matters.

THE IRAN PLANS - Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb? By Seymour Hersch : Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January, they had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted the turnover as “a white coup,” with ominous implications for the West. “Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others are waiting to be kicked out,” he said. “We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution.” He said that, particularly in consideration of China’s emergence as a superpower, Iran’s attitude was “To hell with the West. You can do as much as you like.”

Indonesia's Skin Wars - A proposed law against pornography worries moderates and minorities in Indonesia: The black bra under the thin yellow kebaya, a close-fitting blouse, leaves little to the imagination. Even more suggestive are the flittering eyes and gyrating hips of the dancer, who chases young men to pull them up on stage. One accepts the offer and makes a grab for her large posterior as she beckons with welcoming eyes. Another makes a gesture at her breasts and then stuffs cash into her hands. This is not a lap dance in Las Vegas, but a revered Balinese custom known as the joged bumbung, or bamboo dance.

Final thoughts on RSC (RIP?): All the confabulated adoration of US 60s/70s rock and protest culture is just a substitute for two things: 1) the history Chinese rock doesn't have, and 2) the story it can't tell. Now - and this is different from even two or three years ago - Chinese rockers are really finding their roots in the West. Lots of bands in Beijing (Hang on the Box, SUBS, Ret-ros, etc.) are now singing in English, and this is new. And in the Wudaokou record shops, this leaves the playa haters saying, "They're not making music for us here. They're making it for the West, coz they want to be famous."
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Chinese police probe skulls find: In the markets of Lhasa, bowls made from fake skulls sell for two or three pounds each. But bowls made from genuine human skulls are said to fetch hundreds of pounds.
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China gives Cambodia $600m in aid: Analysts say China is keen to strengthen ties with south-east Asian countries that have sea ports that can serve Beijing's growing hunger for oil from the Gulf. Cambodia hopes its closer ties to China will help it counter the influence of its rival, neighbouring Vietnam, analysts say.

2006-04-08T03:18:00.000+08:00

The Beijing Street Prostitute's MBA Lecture

1997 Pulitzer Prize in the category of Medicine: AIDS Fight Is Skewed By Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks - Most Heterosexuals Face Scant Peril but Receive Large Portion of Funds--Less Goes to Gays, Addicts

"We all wear the same uniform":

3. How long have you been in Iraq?

Since September 17th, 2005. Basically four and a half months.

4. Now that you've been deployed to Iraq, do you feel differently about being in the military?

Definitely.

5. If so, how?

I have a different perspective of life and what is most important to me. I will not re-enlist and I hope to never be away from my husband again in these kind of conditions. I fear for his life everyday. We are both deployed. We are relatively close so I can see him often but this is something I never want to do again. I have many more reasons but do not feel that I should share them at this point.

19. When you were on leave, did you spend any time looking at mainstream media coverage of Iraq?
No, not at all. Even here in Iraq we get CNN but we choose to turn it off.
20. What did you think of it?
Our reason for that is the media's coverage seems to only portray the bad in everything that we have done over here.
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China to Ship Oil Through Mekong Next Month: The bulk of... Middle Eastern oil passes through the Strait of Malacca which, apart from piracy and terrorism concerns, is viewed by Beijing as a potential choke point where rivals can shut down its access to oil and raw materials.

At a Secret Meeting, Chinese Analysts Clashed Over Reforms: Many attendees emphasized that they were alarmed by the resurgence of socialist thinkers critical of the lurch toward capitalism. Some said the governing party would face growing social and political instability unless it established genuine rule of law. ... "Leftists in our society are saying absurd things," Mr. Sun said. "But as elite intellectuals, we cannot deny that they have a solid basis for saying them."

Labor need haunts China: There is much talk of a labor shortage in China. Some bemoan its impact on wages and profit margins. Some see it as proof of the dynamism of the economy, some as a harbinger of declining competitiveness in international markets. Others dismiss it as a largely mythical invention of employers unwilling to offer wage increases that are higher than inflation. ...The picture for skilled labor is very different. The shortages are everywhere and are unlikely to go away soon, posing an obstacle to growth in general and to higher value-added exports in particular. Even the low-end factories need managers and engineers as well as nimble-fingered farm girls.

Stones tracks censored in China: Sir Mick sarcastically said: "I'm pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming."

China introduces new media curbs

高華：從今日俄羅斯看明日大中華（二）: 四、俄羅斯聯邦治病不需要支付掛號，檢查和治療費用。藥品的費用由國家控制並有高額補助。而在中共統治下的當今中國，無論是城市還是農村，假藥氾濫，醫商勾結，醫院滿天敲詐。普通百姓把到醫院看病形容成「過鬼門關」，連中共高層都承認「看病難」、「看病貴」列為導致社會不穩定的「四大因素」之一。許多退休人員一旦生病就意味著等死，而中共高官則從在位、退休到死都享受著巨額醫療費用和高級藥物和保健系統。

Out Of Control - AIDS and the corruption of medical science: Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, who discovered the revolutionary DNA technique called the polymerase chain reaction, has long been a supporter of Duesberg, but he has grown weary of the AIDS wars and the political attacks on contrarian scientists. "Look, there's no sociological mystery here," he told me. "It's just people's income and position being threatened by the things Peter Duesberg is saying. That's why they're so nasty.

2006-04-07T11:37:00.000+08:00

Politics, a DNA strand that is missing in all Singaporeans. Sense, only sense in Singaporeans are dollars and cents. Apathy, is everywhere in every Singaporean

Dear Mr. President, Here's How to...: by Thomas P.M. Barnett ... TO UNDERSTAND CHINA TODAY, you have to remember what it was like for the United States back in the early years of the twentieth century. Here we were, this burgeoning economic powerhouse with a rising yet still relatively small military package, and all the old-school powers worried about us as an up-and-coming threat. While the European form of globalization predominated at that time, our upstart version ("We don't need no stinkin' empire!") would come to dominate the landscape by the century's midpoint, primarily because Europe decided to self-destruct all its empires via two "world" wars that in retrospect look like the European Union's versions of the American Civil War. Biff- Barnett's views are interesting, but his MBA cracker meets jarhead prose (found elsewhere in the article) is too amusing...

Curbing betel chewing in Taiwan a tough nut to crack "Taking it with a cigarette and a sip of Wisby (energy drink) is more than heaven," said Lin, as he took a break from distributing pamphlets in a betel nut shop in Taoyuan county, a drab industrial suburb 40 minutes from Taipei. Efforts to wean Taiwan off the habit range from puritanical -- a ban on young saleswomen showing off their breasts, bellies and buttocks in town -- to an environmental appeal for farmers to switch crops as the shallow-rooted betel nut trees have been blamed for deadly mudslides.

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A new world with Chinese characteristics: Prague's genius Franz Kafka, who did not know much about China but experienced the depth of humans' labyrinthic soul... (Biff- WTF?) The West, on the rise since the 15th century and which, through its American version, still dominates world affairs, will have difficulty conceiving and accepting that it will not anymore unilaterally dictate the global agenda; that it will have to adjust. Biff- As always, Asiatimes online can be counted on to deliver high-toned gibberish and fractured arguments. The West wasn't on the rise, capitalism was. Christianity kept the West down for a thousand years. The apex of Western achievement is intellectual and independent of regional tradition: i.e. secular humanism, empiricism, and so forth. This mindset is opposed to all boundaries of religion and tradition. It is not pro-Western or anti-Chinese. The author, like so many lefties, is a closet-racist. I don't say this to condemn but to clarify a process. There but for the grace of jeebus, goes I. 'Westernism' is a human achievement like long division and times tables, and not something tied to a piece of real estate. This is also one of the reasons cultural imperialism is such a bogus concept. As if two plus two equals four is Western and trying to persuade Zhou Sixpack makes one guilty of cultural hegemonizing. Pfft...

Pipes calls war a success: Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war? A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture. Biff- if correct, this would match the ingratitude of European politicians for US assistance in WWI (denying US assistance determined the war's outcome and then welching on war debts) and WWII (the US acted out of self-interest: a non-sequitor complaint on all fours with whining about the icy inhumanity of two plus two consistently equaling four). Or think to the CCP which essentially claims it defeated the Japs singlehandedly. The more things change, the more...

2006-04-06T09:19:00.000+08:00

My Seven Years In The World Of Gangsters: As of March 19, 2006 at 00:45, there have been 1,729,215 page views and 21,584 comments. The rest of this story is mixed in with the comments. The translator does not know how long the story goes on because he has not made it past even a small fraction of the comments ...

The Yuexi Boat Disaster: The purpose of this exercise is to illustrate how difficult it is to get a reasonable understanding of an incident, and how it is necessary to refer to multiple accounts in order to piece together a picture which may not even be correct.

The high price paid by China's miners : Nearly 6,000 died last year alone in more than 3,000 fires, floods, explosions and other accidents.

Kiss warning to Malaysia tourists : The Malaysian government has had to step in to stop a number of organisations from forming private snoop squads to spy on the public and report immoral behaviour.

Are Facts Obsolete?: For example, slavery is an issue that is widely discussed as if it were something peculiar to Africans enslaved by Europeans, instead of something suffered and inflicted around the world by people of every race, color, and religion. Two books about more European slaves brought to North Africa than there were African slaves brought to America have been published in recent years. They are "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters" by Robert Davis and "White Gold" by Giles Milton. Both books have been largely ignored by the media and academia alike -- and the first went out of print, less than 6 months after being published. Biff- I checked excerpts from both books at Amazon and neither seems to make the claim that more Europeans were enslaved than the estimated 12 million Africans who were enslaved for the transatlantic trade. That said, at the risk of overgeneralizing, a slave is a slave and not a happy camper. And the slave trade isn't a team sport in which, by today's loony standards, that location with the most slaves historically wins. Enslaved Christians in North Africa in the end amounted to about one million.

2006-04-05T11:35:00.000+08:00

The Mexican solution: Article 11 guarantees federal protection against "undesirable aliens resident in the country." What is more, private individuals are authorized to make citizen's arrests. Article 16 states, "In cases of flagrante delicto, any person may arrest the offender and his accomplices, turning them over without delay to the nearest authorities." In other words, Mexico grants its citizens the right to arrest illegal aliens and hand them over to police for prosecution. Imagine the Minutemen exercising such a right!

The Window To The Chinese-language World At the time, it was not just Ming Pao Monthly and Mr. Jin Yong who opposed the Cultural Revolution. There was also President Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. How did that go? In 1966, I was fourteen years old and I suddenly found out that I was getting more calligraphy classes at school. I had to practice calligraphy and I had to write with the brush. I also suddenly realized that I was getting more of the basic teachings in Chinese culture -- the Confucian classics. In 1966, Mr. Chiang Kai-shek began the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement, and we were involved in that movement. Thirty years later, I found out that the KMT started the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement in order to oppose the Cultural Revolution.

Voodoo Dolls In China: So the latest fad among young people in China is the voodoo doll, and it is also the target of crackdown by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce due to the bad influence.

真的有“人民文革”嗎？:

Consequences of a CCP Takeover : 15.) China Mobile invests in Chunghwa (Zhonghua) (Zhonghua) telecom, it will transmit signal all the way to Shanghai via microwave relay. Becomes part of world's largest telecom firm with 300+ million subscribers (with built-in 3G Walled Garden internet access). Buys out all other telcoms in Taiwan and controls all telecommunications. 16.) Taiwan bottoms out and uses it's last resort for income by finally allowing gambling on Penghu Island (or maybe even in Kending). Japan invests/helps create a floating airport, Penghu becomes major gambling den for weathly Chinese/Japanese. 17.) Taiwan Triads merge with brotherhoods in China. Move to Penghu. Porn industry develops with South Taiwan based T-bag pole-dancing girls eager for jobs. Major drug labs secretly opened on offshore islands. North Korea donates benjamin printing plates for major new counterfeit money laundering ring operating out of Penghu by Whitewolf, CCP Gov't and friends.

China death threat for oil theft: The majority of crude oil thieves are farmer peasants in the impoverished and remote regions, who earn a third as much as their city dwelling counterparts, Mr Ma said. One popular method used to steal oil involves thieves building a hut and then drilling into oil pipes beneath the building.

Female Genital Cutting - Wikipedia Entry:

Understanding Problems: A First Step Toward Fixing Them - Historically, and even today, in most places where female circumcision is practiced, it is primarily done to women by other women. Typically, a young girl's mother will decide when it's time for her to have this done, and will take her to an aunt, or grandmother, or other female clansman to get it done. Indeed, it would be very rare, in most societies, to find men anywhere near the place where the female circumsision is to be done. Biff- I spend most of my time in the company of women and it's long seemed to me that the repression of women clearly comes most often at the hands of other women, usually mommy training daughter in the arts of being submissive, followed by peer pressure, followed by oneself on noting the emoluments of bewitching a lifelong meal-ticket to the alter.

2006-04-04T00:54:00.000+08:00

孫文與中國百年憲政的教訓（二）孫文的道路︰從民主走向獨裁 - 反中央集權和反國有化的地方主義運動，辛亥革命在全國得到廣泛響應，13省相繼宣布獨立。此時黃興趕到武昌，就任革命軍戰時總司令。而孫文正顛沛流離，在科華拉多州的一家華人餐館洗盤子。孫文的十大革命，依靠的基本上是黑社會暴動。

棒球真的是台灣的「國球」？ : 最高紀錄有超過400萬人在電視機前一起加油，因此說棒球不是台灣人的最愛，又好像有點不切實際。然而，放眼職棒賽的觀眾席（票價和看場電影差不多），除了周休假期外，球迷總是稀稀落落，轉播平均收視率0.5％，也遠低於綜藝或戲劇節目，不禁令人懷疑那399萬7000人跑到哪裡去了？（職棒去年平均票房約3000人左右）

太石村的中國農村民主力量 :太石村事件有兩個意義。一個意義是啟動了中國農村法治民主變革的新路徑；另外一個角度來看，它強化了中國和平轉型的可能性，使官民雙方良性互動成為一種可能，就是在雙方不斷變化的控制方式和抗爭方式過程當中，在各種變數雲集的情況下，仍然可能開拓出一個和平轉型的路徑。

Bio-engineered bladders successful in patients: ...while scientists have had success with skin transplants grown on scaffolds in the past, this is the first time they have grown and transplanted a discrete, complex organ.

AFRICA: China's great leap into the continent: "I don't know what we would do without the Chinese," said Chinembiri, "Finally, now there are things we can afford." Biff- Sounds like a description of Wal-Mart. Oops! I forgot that selling cheap products the poor can afford is bad for the community...

Labor Shortage in China May Lead to Trade Shift: When sporadic labor shortages first appeared in late 2004, government leaders dismissed them as short-lived anomalies. But they now say the problem is likely to be a more persistent one. Experts say the shortages are arising primarily because China's economy is sizzling hot, tax cuts have helped keep people working on farms, and factories are continuing to expand even as the number of young Chinese starts to level off.

《中国「六四」真相》 : Biff- The Tianmen Papers in Mandarin

China International Organ Transplant Center

Japanese flock to China for organ transplants: He was astonished by just how easy it was. Ten days after contacting a Japanese broker in China in February, he was lying on an operating table in a Shanghai hospital receiving a new kidney. A doctor had only examined him that morning. "It was so fast I was scared," he said. The "donor" was an executed man, the price 6.8 million yen (about US$80,000).
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Uneasy lies the crown in Myanmar: Than Shwe, the SPDC's top general, is systematically resurrecting the symbols and rituals of Myanmar's royal history to lend legitimacy to his regime's right to rule. And there are emerging indications that he intends to anoint himself as the country's new monarch - more than 120 years after British India annexed and dissolved the Awa royal dynasty.
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The white peril: “HEAVEN help China,” said a front-page headline last December in China Industry News, a normally staid state-owned daily paper. For four months, the newspaper had been running a series of reports into takeovers of Chinese machine manufacturers by foreign companies.
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Mike Tyson pays respects to Mao: "I felt really insignificant next to Chairman Mao's remains," he was quoted by a Chinese daily as saying.

2006-04-02T10:50:00.000+08:00

Tibet-China railway: Link for plague - The completion of the first railway linking Tibet to other Chinese regions could fuel the spread of rat-borne diseases such as plague that mainly affect remote areas of northwest China, the state media said on Saturday. Biff- hysteria sells.

China slams online counterfeits: China recently announced it would create a court to focus on enforcing intellectual property rights.

New evidence questions the simple link between prion proteins and vCJD: While newly published research confirms that under laboratory circumstances prion-protein can be absorbed across the gut, it also shows that this is unlikely to occur in real life. In addition, the results show that the places in the gut that do take up these disease-associated proteins are different from the locations where infectivity is known to be amplified. The findings will be published in the Journal of Pathology. Biff- Never bought into the magic bullet theory for mad cow disease; it's no more persuasive than that for AIDS.

2006-04-01T13:11:00.000+08:00

Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies: In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" -- the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: ''You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

Walking the Talk Talk: A Family-Friendly Guide: We finished our coffee and set out again. This time my brother knew what to do. He acted like an old hand at this, like he’d been doing it for years. A lady crossed in front of him – he kept walking, plowed her over…and then kept walking! I could not have been a prouder brother that day.

Thousands Honor Chinese Goddess in Taiwan: The festival, which began on the night of March 25, is under the patronage of Chen Lan Temple president Yen Ching-piao, who is also an independent lawmaker and a political powerbroker with a shady past. Given to wearing dark designer suits, Yen is short, squat man with owlish eyes and the piercing look of a mafia godfather. A mammoth wooden plaque in his office reads, "He of high morals is greatly esteemed." Yen has been convicted of corruption, attempted murder, illegal possession of firearms and attempting to pervert the course of justice, but is free pending an appeal.

Taiwanese man arrested for human trafficking in Vietnam

Killing Bin Laden will inspire 10 more: Dalai Lama - "This new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful on television. Leaders in the East use religion to counter that, to bind these countries together."...Although he appeared not to approve of the war, he was admiring of Bush. "He is very straightforward," said the monk. "On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn't mind when I was blunt about the war. "By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism." Biff- plates of biscuits..? astonishing grasp of Buddhism..?

3 Pinoys confirmed killed in Bahrain boat mishap: Abdullah al-Qubaisi of vessel owner al-Dana blamed the disaster on overloading, telling Bahrain television the boat was allowed to carry only 100 passengers. “They loaded the boat with more than its capacity. The captain refused to sail but they forced him to leave,” he noted. Al-Qubaisi said the captain and two assistants who survived reported that the two-level 100-meter long boat capsized when too many passengers gathered at one end. Biff- Flip fisherman, like their eastern Canadian brethren are famous for being unable to swim. A couple of years back, when questioned about this by nosy Western reporters and asked what was being done about it, a Philippines minister cried racism, implied that locals making claims about the inability to swim was unpatriotic, and said there was no need for a program to teach fishermen to swim.

2006-04-01T12:59:00.000+08:00

Aussies and Chinamen

Hi A: I thought you might find the article excerpted below, dealing with Australian racism and Chinese gold miners, and the hiding of the facts by left wing historians, to be interesting.

I offer it as a sideshow to the 20th circus of left-wingers embracing racism either overtly (through to the end of WWII) or covertly (down to the present day via the closet racism of pandering to minorities as if they were mentally feeble). The KKK mindset of racism, class envy,
resentment of one's betters, a preference for violence and emotionalism over debate and empiricism, is still with us, only the social echelon's affluence and education has improved and it thus employs a different ideological format for venting grievance. People pursue power in a myriad ways, given their strengths and limitations, and the KKK is simply a part of that. If you strip the emotions away from it, you'll find it's as mechanical as a watch. The KKK mindset is no doubt as old as the Neolithic and will remain with us until, perhaps, artificial intelligence gets going. In the mean time, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the increasingly prominent editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, is a poster child for this sort of thing. Well-mannered, well-placed, well-spoken, chic, genteel, and a power-chasing predator to the marrow of her bones. Well, to a greater or lesser degree, aren't we all?

Anyway, the following excerpt is about the Chinese experience. (But the story of how Australian historians have been caught fabricating massacres of Aborigines is even worse.) As always, I do not pretend that the right is free of its own herd of frauds and shysters.

From: Why Australia is not a racist country by Keith Windschuttle

It is true, as Sammut argues, that in the second half of the nineteenth century, Australian trade unionists orchestrated periodic anti-Chinese agitations. Against my case that the union response was primarily on economic and egalitarian grounds, directed against poorly-paid and unfree coolie labour, Sammut insists the motive was racial prejudice.

No one who reads the colonial press reports about anti-Chinese meetings on the nineteenth century goldfields, he says, can fail to appreciate this. "The streak of prejudice that ran through Australian society was on full display," Sammut writes, though without actually quoting any of the newspapers of the day. He makes no comment on my detailed account of these incidents.

They were perpetrated, I argue, by a militant minority of white gold diggers. Most had been in the country less than three years. Some goldfields newspapers were certainly prejudiced against the Chinese, especially the one habitually cited by left-wing academic historians, the Burrangong Miner and General Advertiser, which had a brief life in the tent city that sprang up in the Young district in 1861–2. However, the mainstream press of the day took a different view.

The Sydney Morning Herald defended the Chinese and condemned the rioters. It hoped the parliament had "enough English feeling to protect the Chinese now in this country against the savage oppression of the vandals — many themselves foreigners — and who have no other right on our gold-fields than is given by the laws they violate." [emphasis in original] Sammut's article does not admit the existence of, let alone attempt to explain, such divergence of opinion.

Sammut's comments on the goldfields also avoid the information I provide about the attitudes of the authorities at the time. The government dispatched a force of police to defend the Chinese miners. The police arrested and jailed white rioters. The only person killed in the worst riot at Lambing Flat, Burrangong, was a white digger shot by police.

Under police protection, the Chinese miners returned to the field and re-established their camps and mines. The government compensated them for the tents and gear lost during the riot. The Victorian government paid £7300 for the losses at Buckland River and the New South Wales government gave £4240 to the Chinese at Lambing Flat.

While this information is in Myra Willard's 1923 history of the White Australia Policy, I have not seen one academic historian of the post-1960s generation mention it. This is not surprising. Those who want to beat up the goldfields violence prefer not to tell their readers that the actions of the rioters always remained lawless and gained no sanction from either the state or the mainstream opinion of Australia 's middle class and educated working class.

Although he cites the colonial press as part of his case, Sammut avoids commenting on my content analysis of four newspapers ( Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Mail, Melbourne Argus, Adelaide Advertiser ) during the Afghan incident of 1888 when orthodox historians claim anti-Chinese sentiment was at its height. Rather than displaying a prejudice that ran through all society, the mainstream press largely echoed the views of the Sydney Morning Herald which denounced the "the unreasonable clamour and violent language of a portion of the people".

Elsewhere, Sammut simply asserts his case about anti-Chinese sentiment, without offering evidence of his own or even citing other sources that do. He writes: "A clear and hostile social divide was established between the Chinese and European workers in Australian towns and cities."

Since he is writing a critique of my book that deploys a substantial body of evidence to the contrary, Sammut was obliged to show where I had gone wrong. But he makes no comment at all on my following points:

On the Kiandra and Braidwood goldfields between 1858 and 1870, Barry McGowan's recent study has shown a fair degree of economic co-dependence and familiarity between European and Chinese miners, with numerous instances of Chinese miners buying claims and working claims cooperatively with European miners. There were also joint European-Chinese social events, such as the Braidwood races where Chinese diggers were invited to enter their own horses. At Kiandra, the Chinese were early participants in the fledgling sport of snow skiing and the local Snowshoe Club ran a special day's racing for its Chinese members.

After the early gold rushes, the Chinese were largely excluded by the organised labour movement from the traditional skilled trades, as well as other unionised occupations such as shearing and wharf labouring. Nonetheless, they found their own economic roles. They came to dominate market gardening and eventually had an effective monopoly, growing no less than 75 per cent of the vegetables in the whole country. This led them to become the principal hawkers of vegetables and to control about one-fifth of Australia 's fruit trade. Chinese also found ready employment in the hospitality industry, especially as cooks. Half the cooks in Australian hotels in the late nineteenth century were Chinese. In the 1880s they dominated the low-cost furniture manufacturing industry, leaving the high-quality end of the market to European tradesmen.

Cathie May's history of the Chinese in far north Queensland, where Chinese cash crops became important to the economic health of Cairns and Innisfail, found local Chinese shopkeepers, farmers and artisans succeeded in promoting a degree of friendship and a favourable reputation for themselves. References written by leading townsmen for Chinese merchants showed an unmistakable element of personal esteem. Commercial contacts extended to personal relationships. May found Europeans who grew up in the 1890s recalled visiting the gardens of their father's Chinese tenants on Sundays and taking refreshments. White merchants paid more formal visits to their Chinese counterparts who kept open house and entertained lavishly.

Geoffrey Bolton's 1970 history of far north Queensland, A Thousand Miles Away described race relations in the 1870s on the Palmer River goldfields, where the Chinese constituted a majority of miners, in the following terms: "The remarkable feature about the Chinese question in those years is that very little serious racial trouble occurred, even on the goldfields … Talk, rather than action; a grudging tolerance in practice, rather than stern measures urged by public-house orators." In short, Sammut's claim that Australian towns and cities were marked by a clear and hostile social divide between Chinese and Europeans is a gross exaggeration. Like other members of the academic orthodoxy, he has listened, selectively, to the public-house orators and overlooked more mundane but more common views.

The reliable historical sources do not claim the two races lived together in blissful celebration of cultural diversity. The social accord that did exist was not due to any especial virtue among the white inhabitants, and had nothing to do with any moral advocacy of racial acceptance, let alone a theory of multiculturalism. It was simply a product of the everyday workings of trade, commerce, industry and employment. Cathie May probably summed it up best when she said most Queensland communities accepted the Chinese with "apathetic tolerance."

2006-04-01T02:14:00.000+08:00

Beijing Adopts the PR Route over Taipei: They also concluded that it would still be disastrous to confront the US militarily. In December 2003, the People's Liberation Army shifted away from overt threat of war against Taiwan, and instead enunciated the strategy of 'three wars' - psychological, legal and in the media.

New Breed of Activist Is Changing China: Hao represents a new breed of activists in China who believe their individual actions can bring about institutional change and who have ingenious strategies for exploring the existing space for citizen participation. In pushing for change, they carefully avoid the confrontational stance adopted by political dissidents. Instead, they pick their fights skillfully. Biff- the more I learn about political dissidents the more my skepticism and contempt grows...

HARD POUNDING by Victor Davis Hanson: In retrospect, up-armoring humvees would have been wise from the very outset — so would having something remotely comparable to a Panzerfaust in 1943, more live than dud torpedoes in 1942, or deploying a jet at the beginning of the Korean War that could compete with a Russian Mig 15.

2006-03-31T11:02:00.000+08:00

Growth not felt by most in Republic of Philippines: The bank said despite two years of economic growth, surveys showed that 17 percent of the population reported hunger compared to 12 percent last year and over 49 percent considered themselves impoverished compared to 48 percent in 2005. ...The Philippines is expected to grow 5.3 percent in 2006 and 5.6 percent in 2007 compared to 5.1 percent last year due to rising consumption fuelled by strong remittances from Filipinos working overseas, the World Bank said. ...The Philippines is one of Asia’s biggest importers of rice... Biff- This is what makes the Third World the Third World. Fucked up traditional culture in which ideology and eschatology trumps pragmatism and empiricism.
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Collapsing the Maya: “Captives were tortured in unpleasant ways depicted clearly on the monuments and murals (such as yanking fingers out of sockets, pulling out teeth, cutting off the lower jaw, trimming of the lips and fingertips, pulling out the fingernails, and driving a pin through the lips), culminating, sometimes years later, in the sacrifice of the captive in other equally unpleasant ways such as tying the captive up into a ball by binding the arms and legs together, then rolling the balled-up captive down the steep stone staircase of a temple.”
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...but oh, right, THAT'S Beijing: Scruples about this kind of thing are hardly in abundance. (Remember, the Chinese are "pragmatic" - which is another way of saying intimidated into submission.) Last week a former Taipei Times colleague - yes, the deep green pro-independence newspaper - over dinner told me of having applied for a job with the ultimate CCP mouthpiece, The People's Daily. Biff- Holidarity is quite a good blog. Worth going back now and again.
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Philippines blast 'extortion bid': An extortion attempt may have been behind an explosion on the southern Philippine island of Jolo which killed nine people, police have said.
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The Economics of Polygamy Biff- some interesting links on this and polyginy in Southeast Asia.

2006-03-30T17:30:00.000+08:00

VP Cheney’s Speech At Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner (VIDEO): Biff- Hard to imagine Cheney as a successful comedian? Watch him here make fun of himself. It worked well with the crowd.

三峽洩水長江岳陽段發生崩岸

The Taishi Village Elections (or How To Steal An Election, If You Must): Biff- A good roundup in point fashion for how it's done or been done in rural China or rural Taiwan.

Why we must remember Allen Leung: Mr. Leung's death silenced one of the leading anti-Communists in San Francisco's Chinatown, one local called him "the backbone of anti-communism" (Epoch Times). ...Several community leaders, understandably afraid to reveal themselves, called Leung "an eyesore for the CCP" (Epoch Times), and his support for the island democracy of Taiwan was well known. Many believe "that the case involved political motivations." Biff- If true, it echoes David E. Kaplan's "Fires of the Dragon" about the Overseas Chinese version of the Cold War which took place in American Chinatowns between KMT and CCP operatives.

Taiwan veterans seek young China brides: "We treat people from Taiwan nicely and with respect, but look at how they treat us?," said Tang Shulan, a native of China's Hunan province who came to Taiwan seven years ago. Biff- That's a fib... "Before I came, I was told Taiwan was a great place and I would live a good life. If I had known, I would not have come no matter how poor I was at home," said Tang, whose husband is 82. Biff- Another fib... "They made me so nervous and I felt as if I had committed some serious crime," said Yuan, who said she had travelled hundreds of miles to Taiwan to escape poverty in China. Biff- Finally, the truth... Yuan (43) and her 86-year-old husband live in a tiny room leased from the city government for $100 (57 pounds) a month and spend most of their days reading newspapers on a park bench. Their only source of income is his military pension. Biff- Now there's a lifestyle. Must be love...

杭州女大学生卖淫案调查：卖身钱多被挥霍(图): 浙江省杭州市公安机关日前破获一通过网络组织介绍卖淫的特大犯罪团伙，令人吃惊的是，该团伙中相当一部分卖淫女竟然是在校的女大学生。有关教育专家认为，女大学生卖淫团伙的出现反映了当前大学生群体中金钱观念的扭曲和道德观念的沦落。Biff- More juvenile malarky on the public stage as official China pretends to emerge kicking and screeching from the Victorian age...
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China says it will close new Rolling Stone magazine: "They didn't go through the proper procedure," said Chen Li, director of the newspaper and magazine department with the Shanghai Press and Publication Department, where the magazine was published. "There will be no future Rolling Stone content in this magazine. There's no such thing as 'Rolling Stone.' " ..."I can tell you with absolute certainty, it's not true," said Hao Fang, chief editor of Rolling Stone China. "The second issue of our magazine should be on newsstands in April."
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China's home-grown tech firms: Despite China's image as the sweatshop of the world, the country's homegrown technology sector is beginning to bloom.

2006-03-29T11:32:00.000+08:00

Black Perspectives on Illegal Immigration: Nor do I buy the "illegal immigrants do jobs that Americans don't do" argument. Who do you think were doing these jobs beforehand? Who do you think often still does them, in areas with few illegal immigrants? Nor do illegal immigrants only do the so-called crappy jobs, but are also in areas like construction. Not to mention the issue of price. Illegal immigrants undermine the wages of low-income black (and other) workers, thus undermining the economic opportunity of lower-income blacks (and others) even further.

Christopher Hitchens on the media coverage of Iraq, and whether some on the other side are recognizing what they've wrought.

Time Magazine's Michael Ware from Baghdad.

Biff- Two interesting takes on some of the present circumstances of the Iraq War/Occupation (both print and mp3 formats available)

Cops torn between Abu, ‘extortionists’ in Sulu blast: The Philippine National Police (PNP) yesterday said the extremist Muslim group Abu Sayyaf was behind the attack on a consumers cooperative center run by Catholic priests in Jolo, Sulu, in the country’s conflict-torn southern Mindanao region, where nine persons were killed the other day. But Jolo police chief Senior Supt. Ahirum Ajirim blamed extortionists for the bombing, the second deadly blast to hit Mindanao this year that came amid tight security and while a few US soldiers were deployed in Jolo for humanitarian missions.

黃廣湘：從劉德華的理智看大陸媒體的病態: 3月22日，西北某家晨報報導了蘭州一個追星女的故事，標題為《女子為見劉德華傾家蕩產．稱見不到他今生不嫁人》，不厭其詳地介紹了一個叫林鵑的女子12年追星歷程，以及其家人如何為她籌措見劉德華的經費而變賣家產，直至債臺高築。

古狗甘當中共的「看家狗」 : 我嘗試搜索自己的名字，那些我在海外發表的一系列政治評論文章的題目都會排列出來，但一旦我去點擊某一篇文章，立即就顯示出「沒有此內容」的答案。更不可思議的是，我再也無法點擊開其他任何內容，也沒有辦法登陸其他的網站，我的電腦頓時處於某種「休克」狀態。我只能重新開機。

This stinks: (scroll down the page) Richard Kreimer is the kind of guy who gives the homeless a bad name. At 56, he is a professional vagrant whose only "job" appears to be camping out in the Amtrak/NJTransit waiting room at Penn Station for five or so hours per night. ...Fifteen years ago, in one of the most ludicrous suits ever, Kreimer was awarded $230,000 from the Morristown, N.J., public library and police department because he had been repeatedly ejected from the library as a public nuisance. ...He has since filed lawsuits against various towns and businesses and transit systems and individuals. Some were dropped, but some were settled, putting more money in his tattered, smelly pockets. Biff- Too funny... I've crashed in a couple of homeless shelters in the US, so I've little sympathy for the notion that the indigent don't have ample resources.

Video of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson,Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, Founder & President. Rev. Peterson discusses black political leaders, what happened in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, and how best to help Americans who need it. Biff- If you think Bill Cosby stirs up some black Americans, wait'll you see Rev. Peterson. He's a trip... Rather than write him off as a caricature, you might want to consider his description of demoralized American blacks (as opposed to Caribbean blacks in the US, who tend to sneer at the American variety), as lacking in character, resolve, self-respect and showing a pronounced incapacity for decision-making and independent thought, with your experience here in China. The simple-minded will shriek racism, the more subtle will look into themselves for similar patterns of behavior and extropolate outwards from this to peer into the minds of others bound by the limitations of other cultures and subcultures and who don't fail singularly, but serially. Unless of course, you too fail serially, in which case you best stick with shrieks of racism.

2006-03-28T10:18:00.000+08:00

Britain and France Build Robocarrier: The F-35B will be the primary warplane on the British carriers. But it's also likely that many, or all, of the next generation of aircraft on these ships will be robotic. But first, the ship has to be equipped with an unprecedented degree of automation. Biff- originally linked at the highly recommended blog http://www.deanesmay.com/

MSM Plagiarism Strikes Again – AP Welcome to the Party : We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us. ...by using a term like blog to somehow excuse plagiarism, the mainstream press continues to lower the bar for acceptable behavior.

The Stone Face of Zarqawi : Since February 2004, there have been numberless attacks on Shiite religious processions and precincts. Somewhat more insulting to Islam (one might think) than a caricature in Copenhagen, these desecrations did not immediately produce the desired effect. Grand Ayatollah Sistani even stated that, if he himself fell victim, he forgave his murderers in advance and forbade retaliation in his name. This extraordinary forbearance meant that many Shiites--and Sunnis, too--refused to play Zarqawi's game. But the grim fact is, as we know from Cyprus and Bosnia and Lebanon and India, that a handful of determined psychopaths can erode in a year the sort of intercommunal fraternity that has taken centuries to evolve. If you keep pressing on the nerve of tribalism and sectarianism, you will eventually get a response.

移民是香港神話的鑰匙:　許多香港人在提及自己居住的城市的時候，都念念不忘一百六十多年前，這裡僅僅是南中國海邊毫不起眼的荒蕪小島。一百多年來，正是大批大批的移民在歷史轉彎的時候流入，才把香港從漁村變成商埠，從工業製造基地變成亞洲的娛樂和金融中心。許多人把今天的香港稱之為「家」，可是幾十年、甚至十幾年前，在南來北往的移民眼裡，這裡僅僅是移居海外的跳板、踏腳石，只是人生旅途的中轉驛站。- Biff - while Taiwan's government keeps out foreign immigration and suffers from a pronounced brain drain (just take a gander at the bumpkins left behind crowding the streets), the HK government is trying to attract foreign immigration to remedy the same problem. Presumably Taiwan's government is following Japan's conservative model to keep social problems to a minimum; but Japan can afford xenophobia (and make it work) because, to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't have much of a brain drain.

Combat Fatigue: the ruling DPP—and, for that matter, its leader Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian—seems like a one-trick pony, and a tired pony at that. "We spend too much time on Chen and his independence," says Lee. "We have more important and deeper things to discuss." Biff- Dissidents, like other uber-patriots, tend to make poor politicians. If you consider the near pathological pig-headedness required to be a dissident during martial law, you can imagine the incapacity to listen to others and make concessions during the democratic era.

The Economist - Our correspondent is leaving South-East Asia after four years. He reports that politics and economics there have never seemed so smooth: ...Foreigners wanted to take advantage of the region's devalued currencies and foundering conglomerates to buy up local firms on the cheap. Local businessmen, naturally enough, wanted protection from such depredations. Biff- Apparently it's unpatriotic for foreign companies to contribute to domestic economies. ...Singaporeans can now chew gum, read Cosmopolitan and dance on bar tops. Soon, they will be able to gamble too, thanks to the authorities' decision to license two casinos. Instead of simply scolding voters, the government has taken to pandering to them:

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Instructions To Taxi Drivers: The brakes too, operate in a gradual manner, rather than in binary on and off positions. Every time you clumsily jab at the brakes, my stomach comes out my throat. In addition, please be aware that the brakes are not the only way of making your car slow down: an alternative is just to take your foot off the accelerator. Gradually.
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港人反政治竊聽捍衛免於恐懼的自由: 梁國雄的議員辦公室和家裡，都安裝反竊聽裝置﹔身為立法會保安事務委員會主席的民主黨議員涂謹申，假設每一刻都被監聽。親北京的民建聯主席馬力、政協委員劉迺強等，透露被監聽的經驗。

2006-03-27T13:53:00.000+08:00

北京與華盛頓合力把馬英九推向總統府？
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被槍戰射傷的香港媒體: 警殺警案的十發子彈，射穿了香港媒體不專業和充滿豐富想像力的新聞軀體。
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環保巨人是利用各種廢棄物組合而成，你看出馬桶在哪兒了嗎？ Biff: Taiwan's artistic genius at the fore...
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馬反對聯國停繁體字若與中國協商建議兩字體並行
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Just Because You Eat Shit Doesn’t Make You Better Than Me : I was at dinner the other night with a bunch of friends, mostly new ones. Usually being the only “token white guy” in the crowd, I had competition that night. Another Whinese was at the table. He’d been in China for 1 year and early on started working up the crowd with his ‘Woe shur May Gwow Ren” this and “Woe ai shuay shee Hahn you” that. He conveniently ignored me as he performed, stealing a glance every now and again to ensure he would not be challenged as Alpha-Whinese.
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Pentagon stays the course with laser weapon: Airborne Laser given a reprieve — and challenging development schedule - Biff: you can easily imagine at least one application for this weaponry when, and if, it comes on line
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The new port deal: U.S. may hand security over to Beijing - The unbelievable news that the Bush administration and U.S. agencies are lining up a deal with Hutchison Whampoa, a company closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army, gave me a jolt. I thought nothing could surprise me, because I expect many of our officials and politicians to do dumb things, knowing all the dumb things they've done before. But this one blew me away. Perhaps it will blow you away too. - Biff: Fer sure, dude.
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Harley-Davidson roars into China: "Customers will get a real understanding and appreciation of the Harley-Davidson lifestyle," said David Foley, the company's managing director in China. .. The outlet will also provide services, rider training and events such as organised rides.
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Blood on the red carpet: Annie Proulx on how her Brokeback Oscar hopes were dashed by Crash - Biff: An excellent example of a fiction author hopelessly incompetent with the essay format. The two forms are almost mutually exclusive, something most people (including myself until recently) don't realize.

2006-03-26T12:24:00.000+08:00

中國也有「教科書問題」: 去年十二月二十三日，姚文元病亡。中國諸多年輕人竟然問「姚文元是誰」？！也有年輕人聽說姚文元是「四人幫」中的一個，便問：「四人幫是哪四個人？」在網上，還可以見到年輕人的種種奇談怪論：「姚老走好！」「成者為王，敗者為寇，死得默默無聞啊！」甚至有人在我一篇關於姚文元的文章上留言：「我黨偉大出人才！」

Booknotes Video: Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June w/ Harrison Salisbury (recorded Oct 15 1989)

Driving Defensively: I'm glad I brought with me from Korea the extra cycling gear I used there: plastic hand, elbow and knee pads that rollerbladers use. In four months here I've lost count already the number of times those have saved me from these idiot drivers. When a car tries to cut me off, my knee scraping on the panel and elbow on the window is much more effective than skin at making them move over, and the same applies to the hands of scooter drivers who try to muscle me off the road

China Plans Surprise Attack on Taiwan: Biff - worth chasing through the comments on this thread.

華爾街日報：北韓制超級假美鈔流入中國: 美國國會研究處一份報告說，目前在全球被發現「超級美鈔」至少有4,500萬美元。並說，北韓每年從假鈔中賺取的利潤可能高達1,500至2,500萬美元。... 金木蘇說，人權活動人士在中國城市丹東從一家北韓貿易公司的僱員那裡獲得了這張假鈔票。他說，這樣的假鈔用50美元就可以買到。

China harvesting inmates' organs, journalist says: Mr. Jin said he first learned of the harvesting operation between October and December and that the prisoners used were members of the outlawed Falun Gong religious group. "This is murder, and murder sponsored by a state," said Mr. Jin, who in the past has been a contributor to a Japanese news agency. "It must be stopped." ...Mr. Jin said bodies of the prisoners were burned in the boiler room of the hospital and that boiler room workers had taken jewelry and watches from the dead and sold them. He said he has provided information about the organ harvesting to U.S. government officials, including members of Congress. - Biff: Make what you will of an unverifiable story that sounds suspiciously like a recreation of the Jewish Holocaust, only with Chinese characteristics...

Chinese translation is here: 華盛頓時報報導蘇家屯活取器官黑幕

Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection: ...An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. ...The memos contain a lengthy discussion among Iraqi officials--from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Intelligence Service--about the wisdom of using a Libyan intelligence front as a way to channel Iraqi support for Abu Sayyaf without the risks of dealing directly with the group. (The Libyan regime had intervened in an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping in 2000, securing the release of several hostages by paying several million dollars in ransom. Some observers saw this as an effort by Muammar Qaddafi to improve his image; others saw it as an effort to provide support to Abu Sayyaf by paying the ransom demanded by the group. Both were probably right.)